Well, January is almost over, and not a minute too soon. Here on the homefront, we lost a week to Karl and I having colds and the better part of another week with ice on the ground. Hopefully, February will bring no downtime from too much sneezing or too much weather.
Meanwhile, the United States has been playing its own version of RuPaul’s Snatch Game. We snatched Maduro out of Venezuela. We continue to snatch people out of their homes and off the streets for what could at least be thought of as dubious reasons in a different kind of ICE storm, snatching the lives away from American citizens in the process. And just for good measure, we tried to snatch Greenland, too.
Now, I can just hear some legitimate grumbles out there. “WE did not do any of those things—THEY did them.” I suppose so, but it’s rather a difference without a distinction when looked at from at least one perspective. And at least for now.
The end of January also brings the arrival of all those documents that remind us that the major item to fall on the to-do list of Americans annually is upon us. We’re moving into tax season, and how we approach that responsibility says a little bit about all of us.
There are those who are organized and not prone to procrastination. They have properly labeled files to house the documentation during the year so that they can proceed with preparing or having someone prepare their tax returns as quickly as possible. If they are entitled to a refund, they want and will get it sooner rather than later. If they owe money, they file at the last possible moment. These people are strategic and methodical. As children, I’m sure these folks ate their vegetables first.
Then there are those who keep those documents needed after the first of the year in some kind of loose file, which is to say, in a particular drawer or on a particular shelf. They have been planful enough to avoid penalties and the like, but they will need to push it all together for the final preparation to find out how much they owe or how much they will get back. If they prepare the forms themselves, they are likely to see April on the calendar before they sit down to do the task. If they don’t, they are likely to be the ones who keep their accountants and H&R Block in business. They are also the ones for whom the word extension is not foreign. These people were the children who had to gag down their vegetables after eating everything else on their plates.
Then there are the folks who file in March. Not too much of a hurry, not waiting until the last minute. It’s something to be done every year, like having the trees pruned. They know what needs to be done to be ready, how the return will be prepared, and there’s no need to get all OCD about it like the first group or panicked like the second group. This is the Goldilocks middle.
Daddy believed that paying taxes was the club fee for being an American. He believed in paying what you owe, and that paying more if you did better was not something to grumble about. As a Republican of his generation, I don’t think he would fit in with how his party has evolved on this issue.
As I am writing this, we’re waiting to see if the Senate will approve a spending package that would avoid at least a partial government shutdown. Of course, the sticking point is funding for and potential reforms to ICE.
By the time this column is published, we will know how this plays out. I suspect that many will find whatever that outcome to be rather cynical. But in these times, the cynic in at least many of us is conjured on practically a daily basis. How and if that cynicism turns into motivation to action is up to the individual entirely.
Having written about taxes, I feel energetic about it, strangely enough. If we’re getting a refund, I want it now. If we’re not, they’ll get their money at the last possible moment.
After all, those folks up in Washington only think they fund the government. But they only direct where the money goes. The money, you know, that is collected from us, plus what must be borrowed to pay for everything else they’re spending money on that they don’t have.
Yes, it’s tax season, and we should be paying attention. To all of it.
