Like most Americans, I have been working on my taxes
recently.
As you might guess, the Captain is not a tidy record-keeper.
I tend to operate more in piles. So preparing my tax forms first requires
sorting through the designated pile looking for relevant documentation for
deductions.
As a United Methodist clergy, the Captain files as “Self-Employed”.
Which means I pay all of the necessary income tax plus all of my own Social
Security tax.
Which makes the paycheck feel even smaller.
Recently on Facebook, a fellow pirate in Florida sought help
with her taxes. As a newlywed, she wondered aloud if she should file as “married
filing jointly” of “married filing separately”. She garnered several helpful
comments.
But then another FBFriend of hers chimed in. He, too, was a self-styled
pirate. He told her she was foolish to pay taxes at all. He insisted that the
government is not legally allowed to collect income taxes, boasting the he has
not paid taxes for nine years!
Even after some do-gooder reportedly turned him in, the IRS
did nothing.
She responded thoughtfully. “I’ll have to do some more reading on this.”
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| Say it with me now... "Reading is sexy!" |
"Just go to YouTube and watch the videos,” he replied.
Friends, if you want to earn the Captain’s respect, please do not quote the following as sources:
1) Fox News
2) Wikipedia
3) YouTube
If you want to prove something is or is not in the U.S. Tax Code, point me to chapter and verse, not to a homemade video of someone who will "explain it" to me.
I urged my friend to ignore this man. Paying taxes is expected of
anyone earning more than a minimal amount of income.
That is when the Rogue pirate began posting links to YouTube
videos.
I did not watch all of them – the stupidity made my head hurt – but most
were of the tin-foil hat variety. “Geniuses” who have “discovered the key” to
not paying taxes.
Sadly, they have not yet discovered the key to wealth or personal hygiene.
One was an interview with a former IRS commissioner who
laughed off the idea of not paying taxes; “Of course you have to pay taxes.” Then
the makers of the video did mental contortions to prove he was wrong.
One was a Fox News interview with the king of tin-foil hats,
former Senator Ron Paul.
Paul, as you probably know, named his son after
Russian-American author Ayn Rand, known for her self-named philosophy of “objectivism”.
Her anti-authoritarian, anti-government writings planted the seeds of modern American
Libertarianism.
In the interview, Paul set up a straw-man argument, stating
that the government thinks of all the money you earn as belonging to them; they
can take as much as they want whenever they want.
His defiant attitude was greeted with orgasmic applause by
the Fox interviewer.
Oddly, thanks to one of the videos, the Captain was quickly able
to point the Rogue to the Sixteenth Amendment:
“The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.”
Naturally, there are those who argue the 16th Amendment
is not legal.
Reasons.
In other news, a recent survey demonstrated that 51% of Americans now believe the Earth is flat.
And then there's this...
I've also written about the great dihydrogen monoxide scare in past posts.
And did you know there is a growing tin-foil shortage in America right now?
But I digress…
American courts have continuously struck down the
arguments against the 16th – as well as those of the anti-tax group – as frivolous.
Nonetheless, there is apparently a small group of people who
still believes that individuals do not have to pay taxes.And the IRS is too understaffed to do anything about it.
I don’t know where these people think the money comes from to pay for
the U.S. military to protect our nation or police to protect our cities. Who
pays for the roads we drive on, or the free public education (which has
apparently failed us) or all those other services the government provides?
When I didn't cave in to his overwhelming arguments, the Rogue resorted to name-calling, calling me “ignorant”. But the Captain kept his cool and took the higher road.
My final word to him was that he could do whatever the “tin-foil
hats” on YouTube told him to do, but as a proud U.S. citizen I consider it a privilege to pay my fair
share in support of our great nation.
And I wish others felt that way too… Mr. President… Congress… “the
1%”…
Now, back to those #@%&* tax forms!
