Why Should People Who Pay No Federal Income Tax Have the Right to Vote?

My husband and I filed our federal income tax this past April, on schedule, a remarkable feat considering this middle class family owed in excess of $25,000 dollars. Yep, $25,000+. That’s in addition to the $29,000+ we’d already had withheld from our pay or paid into 2011 quarterly “estimated tax.” And by “paid on schedule” I mean we paid the IRS. The money to ward those sharks off still has to be paid back to the credit card we’d just gotten out from under. But I knew I wouldn’t be able to deal with those people—I tell them how much I can afford to pay each month, then they look at my finances and tell me how much I will pay each month. That’s the point where I’d have been arrested for sedition.

The whys and wherefores of our April shocker aren’t really relative to the point I want to make. Suffice it to say a modest inheritance, early dipping into a retirement account for needed farm equipment, and contract work amounting to another forty-hour plus work week pushed us, without our realizing it, into a higher income bracket. Our actually buying a few items we’d been putting off, for years, and doing things we’d always wanted to do, but had been reluctant to spend money on, should have raised the red flag. It didn’t. We won’t make that mistake again. We need to stay home, drive dilapidated automobiles, and jury rig everything that goes wrong in this house and let our grown kids—who can’t make ends meet—go on welfare instead of trying to help them.

What we really need to do is quit working and draw social security—early. But I’m sure there’s a hitch there, too.

I’m ranting now and getting farther off point. Our taxes were, according to the law, legitimate and have been paid. But it’s less about paying an exorbitant amount like that in one fell swoop than it is about the way the politicians in Washington waste our money without making any effort to cut back. It’s about how taxpayers are the ones who are threatened with a felony conviction for failure to pay enough while someone who doesn’t even file gets hit with a misdemeanor. The IRS goes after responsible people who are paying taxes, no matter how little they have or what they need it for. But the real question is this: Why do people who pay no income tax vote? They shouldn’t. They didn’t when this nation was founded. Only those with a vested interest (property) paid taxes, and they were the ones who had the right to vote. I’m not saying we should return to the days of the landed gentry, but allowing people who pay no federal income tax and share the benefits of, even going as far as live off, those who do is tantamount to thieving politicians buying votes with the taxpayers’ money. Votes that now outnumber the taxpayer. Yeah, speaking about paying “their fair share,” how about the fifty percent of the population that pays nothing at all? They’re the ones failing to do their part. I don’t want the rich to pay more. Jiminy—I think in 2011 I must be considered among the rich. And I ain’t rich, folks.

I highlight this point in my novel Wolf Dawson, the setting of which is late Congressional Reconstruction following the South’s loss in the War Between the States. In the book, I reference a rebellion that occurred in Warren County, Mississippi in 1874 when its tax-payer league arrested a crooked sheriff (under indictment in New York for malfeasance before he ever arrived in Mississippi) and ran him out of the county. The incident ended in bloodshed and ultimately the arrival of Phil Sheridan with federal troops and the reinstatement of the crooked parties, but marshal law in Mississippi was not reinstated and with the election the following year, tax-paying Mississippians won back their state and the Republicans scurried north like cockroaches scramble for cover when the lights turn on. Truth is, Mississippians had kept cockroaches out of the state (I’m speaking metaphorically here. We’ve got plenty of cockroaches in Mississippi and always have had) until they lost the War, at which time the occupying Republicans invited them in and kept them—and themselves—well-heeled with tax-payer’s dollars. Taxpayers, I should add, who were not allowed to vote. Today Americans, even many Southerners forget that crucial point. The taxpayer was not allowed to vote. Even after returning Confederate soldiers swore allegiance to the United States and were reinstated as citizens, they couldn’t “fight” their way to the polling booth, so don’t even go there with me.

Now go back another century to Sam Adams and cohorts who dressed up like Indians and poured British tea into Boston harbor. Same thing. No vote, no tax (vice versa in our case here). It’s one of the basic tenants of this nation. Universal suffrage is not. Universal suffrage is a politician’s way of putting into place an electorate that will put and keep him in power while he, his ilk, and his constituents steal, then squander the taxpayers’ money (buying more votes).

A flat tax is necessary to capture the fifty percent of Americans who are not paying federal income tax.

No tax, no vote.

Thanks for listening to me vent,

Charlsie

There’s More To Having a Publishing Company than Publishing Books

I’m a day late on this post. I returned from Israel just last week following a five-week stay with my daughter, her husband and my new grandson. I’ve spent this past week catching up on home chores. Today is the first day I’ve been into my Blogger dashboard since I began my journey to Israel at the end of January, though I have checked my posted blogs. Nevertheless, I was both excited and dismayed to see I have seven comments, most discussing the creation of my mobi book--excited to know folks are reading my blog and dismayed to realize I had neither published nor responded to the comments. I apologize--I didn’t know they were there. For some reason, I thought I’d be notified by the system. I’m betting I’m not looking in the right place, and it’s time to pull out my “Blogger Guide.” Now that I’m caught up with domestic chores, I’m gonna do just that. In the meantime, here’s this week’s post:

Yesterday I completed Loblolly Writer’s House’s end-of-year worksheet, which I will now submit to my tax person. She will take that data and record it on a Schedule K, then append it to our (mine and hubby’s) 1040.

Loblolly Writer’s House is a sole proprietorship. Its taxes are not complex, and I doubt it would make much difference in our tax liability if I simply “forgot” to submit the data (though Jane would probably miss it). My reason for bringing up this annual cycle is to point out what a nightmare keeping up with the books is.

Journals and ledgers, debits, credits, columns, rows--balancing all those totals! Geez. Accounting lasts all year--and ends--well, only sorta, ’cause it doesn’t really end--the year ends with the closing of “most” of the ledger accounts, then balancing the debits and credits--they have all gotta add up and equal one another. Then there are the adjustments. Now I’ve found adjustments to be very handy. In fact, I actually use “adjustments” to make the debits and credits add up.

More seriously (well, maybe only a little), legitimate adjustments have to do with perishable inventory like paper and ink cartridges. I wrote those suckers out of my accounting system two years ago. I now call such items office supplies and put them all under a single expense account. Works for me. I did simarily with “sales tax.”

Do I sound like I’m speaking to you in generalities--using keywords that sound like “accounting”? I could tell you it’s my writing style--divesting my narrative of detail so as not to bore the reader. I would not be telling the truth. I’m being simple (read as leaving out details), because when it comes to the accounting requirements of my company, I am a simpleton--or maybe just a “simple woman.” Unfortunately, I am unable to keep my accounting simple enough.

Each year at tax time, I have to pull out my course studies (I took a bookkeeping class online from Ed to Go years ago) and re-teach myself what I have to do to close out my books, gather tax data, and start up the new accounting year. I start dreading the process before I’ve got the Christmas decorations put away.

Okay, that doesn’t make me any different from a whole lot of Americans at that time of year. The point I’m trying to make is that there is a lot more to self-publishing a book than, well, publishing a book, assuming that authors are treating their book(s) as a business.

I’m sure some you are wondering, “Why doesn’t she use an accounting program?” I did use one in the beginning. [Still, I had to take time to enter data into the program. Time spent accounting is time spent, no matter how one does it.] Then one day, the software manufacturer wanted me to update--for a price. I didn’t have extra money I wanted to spend on a bookkeeping program I was happy with, and I didn’t want to update. I liked the program the way it was, and I knew it well enough to make it work; it did exactly what I wanted/needed it to do. I’m a writer for Saint Peter’s sake, not an accountant! I wanted to be left alone to enter (and print out) my information on that rare occasion (tax time) when I needed it, and I wanted to spend any free time I never came up with, writing.

Shortly after I failed to upgrade, the software program stopped working, and I did what I normally do when I feel I’ve become dependent on something taking advantage of me. I bought a journal, ledgers, and pencils, and I learned to do the accounting myself. Well...

The “disgraced”software program did do the end-of-year reports with the click of the mouse. For the past several years now, I’ve had to drag out my old school stuff and “re-invent the worksheet” so to speak. Maybe next year I’ll buy a new program, and this time I’ll keep up with the updates.

Thanks for reading,

Charlsie