What’s All This Then!

Usually April 15th is the deadline for filling in your sudoku puzzle known as the 1040. Since the 15th is on a Sunday, the deadline has been moved. Yet this year’s Tax Day isn’t on Monday as you would expect. Instead we have until Tuesday the 17th to grind and gnash our teeth over convoluted paperwork. And “Why do we have an extra day?” you may ask. Well, today Washington DC observes “Emancipation Day” - a recognition for when government outlawed slavery in the private sector. Ironically, tomorrow we all get to observe slavery by the public sector as we celebrate having the fruits of our labors taken from us - not asked for, not earned - taken for pork barrel projects (like the million dollar appropriation for a teapot museum in North Carolina), wasteful spending ($100,000 for goat-meat research in Texas), and needless regulation (estimation of 4.7 million people dying in the last 40 years while waiting for drugs finally approved by FDA). Our ancestors were a little crabby about a 3% tax without representation. Yet, as a result of their revolutionary whining, is 50% taxation with representation much better? Happy Tax Day, everybody!