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Happy Tax Day! by Stormy on April 15, 2010 It's April 15. Are your taxes done? It's an interesting experience being a marmot on Tax Day. I get to sit in the window and watch all the people rushing around madly, getting their taxes ready to send off to the Federal government. My first thought is, “You knew it was coming for months. Why did you wait this long?” It doesn't seem as if Tax Day is appreciated much by the majority of people. A lot of them say bad things about the government, a secret society known merely at the I.R.S. and quite a few, I noticed, chew out their Uncle Sam. It's a rather big coincidence that so many people have an uncle named Sam. What's stranger is that no one seems to like the guy. I figured I'd look up Tax Day to see if I could understand the holiday a little better. It turns out that Tax Day is a floating holiday. It used to be celebrated on March 1 and on March 15 and since 1955 it's been celebrated on April 15 or the first day after April 15 that is not a Saturday, Sunday or a holiday. Back in 2007 people had to wait until April 17 to celebrate Tax Day because April 15 was a Sunday and April 16 was Emancipation Day. On Tax Day people figure out how much money they made the year before and send a portion of it to the I.R.S. Poor people get to send a smaller portion of their income than rich people. And smart rich people find ways to hide their money so that the I.R.S. can't find it, which sounds like a really fun game! Tax money is used to pay for schools and roads and firemen and police and soldiers and for pork bellies, which is really cool. I guess if your road is bad, the government saves you the trouble of talking to your neighbors, who you may or may not like anyway, and instead collects all the money itself and buys you a new road. Or a used one that will work just as well. (I am having a tough time placing pork bellies, though, but I guess swine have some sort of a useful purpose that allows the government to get them new bellies to replace old broken ones.) It also turns out that as a marmot I'm not obligated to pay taxes, so I get all the same services for free. A lot of people probably think that it's unfair and I understand that, but it says in the papers I read that taxation requires representation, so I'll be happy to pay taxes as soon as there's a marmot in Congress, representing my interests! Happy Tax Day, everyone! |
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