In the US we’re celebrating the annual recurrence of the second half of Ben Franklin’s two inevitabilities: filing federal tax returns. State ones, too, if you’re in one that sucks income taxes out of you.
I live in the sad, self-important state of Washington, now. No state income tax, but they pick your pocket with sales tax. In my county that would be 9.5%, worse even than California.
But even though I haven’t lived in the Commonwealth of Virginia since June 2008, it seems I owe them $11. How the hell does that work?
My accountant told me that the Governor of Virginia is very happy I’m willing to contribute. I told him that “willing” would be an over-generous characterization of my attitude. Since I sold my house there last year, the accountant said this’ll probably be my last contribution. Please God.
Much as I loathe Washington & just about everything connected with it, I will not miss the Old Dominion’s grasping income-clutching ways. What continually ate my lunch was this:
Assume you overpaid your state taxes through payroll deductions & you got a refund for $400 last year. Virginia makes you declare that $400 as income for the year. & pay tax on it.
That money is not income, it’s what you didn’t owe them in the first place, but what sat in their coffers for a year collecting interest (for them) until you throttled it from their grubby Confederate History Month-celebrating, right-to-work, tobacco-farming, concealed-weapon-toting good ol’ boy throats.
Let some of those tea-partying crackbrains burn that in effigy.
Meanwhile, I’m writing a check for $11 & noting it “refer to Appomattox Court House, April 1865”.
