I’m one in 30 million… That’s the number of folks who supposedly wait until the last week to submit their tax returns. I used to turn my in as late as possible in years where I owed money, just on the theory of getting every last cent of interest on that money in my bank account. This year, though, we were one of the many Americans getting money back that we’d “loaned” the government for its use during the year. Just work has kept me so busy that we didn’t get around to finishing up our paperwork until, oh, 3:00 in the morning this morning. More specifically, I put down my Jane Hancock early this morning – Jas did all of the various wrestling with various forms that took an hour to complete and made an impact of $1.11 in the final amount of our tax return. In our favor, at least, but $1.11? For an hour’s worth of work, between examining instructions, tracking down the info, and then doing the calculations? That hour’s worth of work would be of more value to me and to society if I spent it helping in a soup kitchen. Heck, if I sold drugs on a street corner, I’d provide more value, just in the terms of the sales tax I’d generate when I bought my fancy car, jewelry, and other trappings.

I heard an interesting piece of trivia the other day that said that 45 cents on every dollar collected goes to the cost of collecting the other 55 cents. Boy, that’s a lousy ROI – I’d never give a charitable organization any money that told me their cost of fundraising was 45%.

Interesting tax trivia (whether they’re true or not, I can’t vouch):
* National Retail Sales Tax – Virginia Chapter
* Cato institute facts and figures

The government needs money to do its job for me – I get that. But don’t make me spend hours trying to figure out whether I’m doing the right thing, paying the right amount, filling out the right forms… the tax on my time and my stress is worse than the cost of the dollars. I owe the gov’t the dollars… I don’t owe them the time and stress.