Monthly Archives: April 2013

To Launder

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No, I’m not coming clean with a new “Dear Dick Launders” column.

Launder verb \’lön-der, ‘län-\
1: to wash in water
2: to make ready for use by washing
3: to sanitize

Related words include cleanse, purge, purify; bleep, blip, cut (out), delete, excise, expunge, gut, x (out); black out, repress, silence, suppress; censure, condemn, denounce; examine, review, screen, and scrutinize, none of which have anything to do with this topic.

Seems a lot to do for a towel and washcloth.

Did you ever wonder why you need to wash (launder) a washcloth? Or a dishrag?

Happy Washing MachineConsider how you use that wash cloth or dish rag. First you submerge it in water to thoroughly wet it. Perhaps simultaneously, you pour on or rub in some soap.

“A soap micelle has a hydrophilic head that is in contact with the water and a center of hydrophobic tails, which can be used to isolate grime.”

Bang the cloth around on bones or dishes for a while. Rinse it out. Maybe lather and repeat. Rinse again. And then wring it dry before hanging it up.

Where have I done that before?

Just exactly what happens when you launder that wash cloth? First you submerge it in water to thoroughly wet it. Perhaps simultaneously, you add soap to the mix. Bang the cloth around on rocks for a while, rinse, and wring dry.

Wait. I did that before you snatched it for the happy washing machine. And yet we need to do it every day?

Really? Every day? Twice?

Next week, we’ll take on towels which spend their entire lives shuttling between mopping up clean water from squeaky bodies and getting beaten on rocks.

 

Today is Earth Day

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I suspect that has nothing to do with the fact that eBay’s President and CEO, John Donahoe, personally emailed me this morning. “Congress is considering online sales tax legislation that is wrongheaded and unfair,” he said, “and I am writing to ask for your help in telling Congress ‘No!’ to new sales taxes and burdens for small businesses.”

I’m all for no new taxes or burdens on small businesses (or their customers).

Voters seem to have a different idea.

Voters haven’t figured out that when they tell the boneheads they elect to “stick it to the rich businessman or rich businesswoman” what they are really doing is making their own cigs or Twinkies or wife-beater t-shirts cost more.

Most states levy a sales and use tax on merchandise.

Here are the arguments, pro and con.

Does the Sales Tax Break the Piggy Bank?PRO: Sales tax proponents say taxing goods bring economic growth, savings, and investment. I’ve seen no reliable data proving that. Still, the rooms and meals tax here in South Florida is about to ratchet up another thousand percent to finance Dolphin Stadium. That’s OK, though, because that tax fleeces only the tourons.

If a sales and use tax on merchandise is legit, then online sellers should charge it the same way local stores do. After all, people who use stuff owe the tax no matter where the stuff is bought.

CON: Sales taxes are regressive. (A regressive tax is defined as “a tax that takes a larger percentage from low-income people than from high-income people.”) I discussed the how much a bigger bite of your paycheck a sales tax takes here last week.

I don’t believe sales and use tax on merchandise is a fair or equitable way for a state to raise funds so no online merchant should collect it; the local stores ought not charge it either.

Mr. Donahoe thinks the solution is simple: if Congress passes online sales tax legislation, eBay says small businesses with [fewer] than 50 employees or less than $10 million in annual out-of-state sales should be exempt from the burden of collecting sales taxes nationwide. Mr. Donahoe wrote “less” there, but I corrected that, too.

eBay’s solution is the worst of all possible worlds. If the tax is due, exempting one group from collecting it is an accounting (and marketing) nightmare, not to mention probably unconstitutional.

And what happens when a $9,999,990 business sells an extra $10 this year? They didn’t collect tax all year. Do they go back to all their customers? Do they suddenly have to find the $5 or $600,000 in taxes owed from their own revenue?

“So what is the fair and equitable way for a state to raise funds?” Liz Arden asked me.

Flat income tax.

If We the Overtaxed people really really understood how much it costs us to employ 22,267,206 federal plus state and local government civilian workers, we would have thrown the always-on-vacation bums out of office decades ago.

And that, dear reader, is why there will never, ever be tax reform in these United States.

(The U.S. Census reports, in a file called “APES,” that our federal government civilian employment plus state and local government public employment payroll for March of 2011 was about $86,500,000,000.)

Did you know you can deduct the state sales tax you pay from your federal tax return?

 

We the Overtaxed People

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At 11:59 p.m. tonight, not 12 hours from now, millions of Americans including Rufus will make their annual mad dash to the post office.

Filing High
I e-filed for the first time this year. Tubbo Tax was a little confused because I didn’t owe any extra and wasn’t due a refund

Familiar icons with Follow us on Facebook and Twitter, IRS logoOddly, Tubbo sent the email announcing that the IRS had accepted my return four minutes before they sent the email announcing that they had successfully sent the IRS my return.

I shouldn’t be worried, right?

This little box came up at the end of the filing status:

How to check your refund status?
Download the MyTaxRefund app and check your status anywhere.
Available on iPhone, iPad, and Android devices.

And then! And THEN!

Filing feels good! Share your tax triumph with your friends.
(Don’t worry, nothing confidential is shared.)
[f Share] [Tweet]

What? Are they nutz?

Taxation WITH Representation
An Internoodle meme going around states incorrectly that Americans paid no taxes before the Income Tax was made permanent in 1913.

The U.S. did impose income taxes during the Civil War and again in the 1890s to pay for war expenses but didn’t make them permanent until 1913. Up until then excise taxes on alcohol and later added to gasoline, tires, telephones, tobacco, and a host of other commodities raised a lot of money to fund the government. Tariffs raised even more. Tariffs were the largest source of federal revenue (and the easiest to collect) from the 1790s until the income tax started growing.

IRS asks, Do you need more time?Tariffs were one of the major causes of the Civil War.

We’ve also had property taxes since colonial times; in fact, the only reason we could go to war against Britain is that we had well-developed tax systems in place to pay for it. By 1796, seven of the then-15 states had poll taxes. 12 taxed some or all livestock. All taxed land one way or another. Most taxed specific occupations.

We the Overtaxed People have been that way since before we threw the (taxable) tea in the harbor.

For the record, I support (a) the flat income tax and (b) elimination of all other tax methods including corporate taxes. People have the right to be taxed fairly, the right to know how much is coming out of their pockets, and the right not to be taxed two or three times on the same income.

Tariffs, excise taxes, sales and value added taxes, and even property taxes are the most regressive way to raise money from a population.

Alabama and Mississippi which have no state minimum wage charge sales tax on food (and they’re not alone). Let’s assume you live in Birmingham in the forward thinking state of Alabama and make $7.50 per hour. You don’t make enough to owe any income tax but we’ll still get you.

Americans report spending $151 on food per week on average but let’s assume you can’t afford to spend half your gross paycheck at the grocery.

If you buy $100/week in Alabama groceries, $8 of that goes to the state. That’s a tax rate of “only 2.66%.” Add in the tax on your phone and cable and apartment and gasoline and it’s easy to see how someone earning minimum wage has a higher actual tax rate than Warren Buffett.

We’re from the Government; We’re Here to Help You Get Healthy
My friend Kay Ace visited the doc a couple of times recently. She was in just before Christmas for a well-grownup, six-month checkup. And she went in last month with that crud going around.

The cost of her office visit went from $93 in December to $113 in March, 100% of which was covered by Medicare. Her Medicare Advantage copay went from $20 to $25. Oh, yeah, and her premium went up.

“Obamacare: We’ll save you money®.”

SCOTUS Upholds Obamacare: It's a tax