Our Tax System is Whacked


I was paranoid that it was just us, filing taxes badly, somehow (even with the help of well known Tax Software) but apparently we're in a growing group ... Tax Foundation economists estimate that for tax year 2004, a record 44 million tax returns will be correctly demanding the return of every dollar (or more) that is being withheld from their paychecks during the year. In other words, after taking all the available credits and deductions, they will owe no income taxes and Uncle Sam may well owe them.

So I guess it's not something wacky we're doing on our tax returns, it's just that we try to give generously and, more than that, have a lot of children ... So we get, this year, a $5000 child tax credit which not only completely offsets the tax we owe, but pays us a little, to boot, on and beyond that. Kind of weird, we certainly aren't looking for a government hand-out. Can we console ourselves with the thought that they've had our money 'as a loan' until refund time, and are earning interest on it? Not really, since this year we chose not to have any withheld, since in the past we've received it all back ... so they weren't really holding any of our money, other than this extra money they're giving us, for some reason, for having many children. It's a very weird situation. I don't mean to knock the income, but, again, we aren't looking for government handouts, and would prefer a smaller, leaner government. There doesn't even seem to be a way to say, "thanks, but no thanks, use this money for important government things" LOL ...

It's weird, that's all I can say.

Posted: Wed - March 30, 2005 at 09:56 PM          

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