Friday, April 15, 2011.
Taxing Afoot.
Shocking discoveries as I work my way through our tax return. Among them is that between Mary Leigh and Jude, they spent over $2500 downloading songs from iTunes last year. I will read them the riot act on that. And tell Jude to get his own damn American Express card.
I was also not pleased to learn that since Mary Ann has taken up gainful employment (she sells the ads for the website), we now make too much money to claim a deduction for college tuitions. Oh, well. Our tax bill is still such a great deal for our being able to live and work in this country that I'm always amazed to hear people complaining about being overtaxed. An AP story a few days ago showed that we pay quite a bit smaller tax percentage than we were in the Reagan Administration. No wonder the country is in deep deficit. I'd like to join a movement of happy taxpayers, but I'm not sure such a thing exists. It ought to. Taken as a whole, nothing returns more benefits to our lives than our taxes. The fact that some of them go to bad ends isn't a good enough reason to abnegate all of them. That would be like saying I'm not going to support my kids in school because they spent too much on iTunes.
And that should bring in a few e-mails.
Mary Ann was gone most of the day. My only meal of the day was the other half of the pad thai Mary Ann fetched from Thai Thai yesterday. But it's still Thai New Year. And callers on the radio show are still wishing me Happy New Year, for the western observance.
Three weeks today since my ankle surgery. I was ordered not to put any weight on that foot for six weeks. Which means I'm halfway to being able to walk, at least a little.
