Tag: Taxation is theft

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We really dodged a bullet in the 2024 election.

As the scandal continues to explode around the Minnesota Somalis I can’t help thinking that this would be so much worse if Tim Walz was the Vice President.

I suspect that D.C. The Harris/Walz administration, and the media would be tying themselves up in knots trying to brush it off as a conspiracy theory, misinformation, or they’d be censoring the hell out of it. In any event, not much actual work of government would be getting done because they’d be fighting fires.

Whistleblowers are coming out of the woodwork saying that Walz and others in Minnesota literally ignored irregularities that they were reporting. Some of those whistleblowers are saying that they suffered threats, intimidation, and retaliation for doing their jobs to protect taxpayer money.

Last I heard we’re talking 1 billion dollars in fraud. Some reports suggest that the amount could be higher. 

Like other Americans, I’m asking how the hell that kind of fraud could be ignored. It begs another more concerning question though…

How much fraud is there in other states is connected with the influx of illegal immigrants or more generalized state fraud.

The government shutdown shined a light on EBT/SNAP fraud. It also scratched at the surface of the festering scab of Medicare/Medicaid, and insurance fraud.

Which leads me to ask, “How much of our horribly unbalanced national budget is fraudulent to begin with?“

The IRS comes after average citizens for $600. I guess that makes sense, if you’ve got billions in fraud, then you’ve got to find more money somewhere.

The thing is, it looks like this kind of fraud has been going on for years, possibly decades and we don’t really know how far it goes. 

That continuing resolution Congress just passed is probably still funding this kind of thing. I expect the next budget fight will be contentious and will shut the government down for another extended period. Perhaps it should. With these revelations, I hope that Congress actually does its job and manages the purse strings instead of kicking the can further down the damn road.

It also adds fuel to the fire regarding illegal immigrants. Given what we’ve seen with the Somali fraud, it seems reasonable to look very closely at every immigrant “service” to figure out exactly how much of our annual budget is being sucked up by supporting illegal immigration via NGO’s.

I think It also galvanizes a more nationalistic view on the part of the American people.

We’ve asked for years, “Why are there veterans homeless? Why are the elderly having to choose between their medication and food? Why is it better to be an illegal immigrant in the United States than being a citizen in terms of monthly stipends? How is it possible that Social Security is going broke?“

Now we have at least some inkling of what may have been going on.

If I were an illegal immigrant, I’d be packing my bags.

I think as this scandal expands, so will the ICE mandate. Whereas now ICE clams they’re targeting criminal illegals, I’m betting that soon it will be ALL illegals whether or not they’ve committed subsequent crimes after their first infraction, (crossing the border without permission).

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Saw this post on X and it got me to thinking

“ If Republicans kill ACA subsidies, a couple making $85K will pay $25,000 a year for healthcare.

That’s 30% of their income—just to stay alive.

This isn’t “fiscal conservatism.” It’s economic violence against the middle class.”

  • Brian Allen @allenanalysis

‪Health insurance doesn’t keep 90+ % of the population paying for it alive.

Most people in a given year don’t spend anywhere near the amount they pay in insurance premiums.‬

‪We joke about men not seeing their doctors. Women may see their doctors 3-4 times a year. If you’ve got children they’re seeing doctors more frequently, but even so an average normal family probably isn’t spending as much as their yearly or even monthly premium.‬

‪The question to ask is what does it really cost for a 20 minute visit with a doctor? What do medications actually cost to manufacture? Why can I self pay for a medication and pay $50 for 90 days, but if I put it through insurance suddenly that same medication is $400? Why can I “Self Pay” for my once a year doctor visit, have a physical + tests & have it cost $800 cash, but my monthly insurance premium per month is $1400? ‬

‪Yes, insurance costs are out of hand. Yes, insurance companies are making breath-taking profits not on illness but by selling fear. The fear they’re selling is rising medical costs but they have a hand in driving those costs up by making those actually practicing medicine have to add staff just to deal with insurance billing and coding.‬ Who are insurance bureaucrats to deny a doctor’s diagnosis?

‪The medical / insurance / pharmaceutical industry is a snake eating its own tail. That snake gets fatter each cycle but eventually it will eat itself to death.‬

‪This issue isn’t partisan. The issue is continuing to throw money at a system that is fundamentally broken and expecting the brokenness to get fixed without looking at or demanding to know why / how it’s broken and taking appropriate action to fix it.‬

‪ACA was presented as an attempt to address the problem. It didn’t work, the math never worked. Congress knew that going in. That’s why they attempted to mandate everyone pay into the system and why they were going to fine people who didn’t.

It failed In part because it didn’t account for economic conditions, and in part because it didn’t account for adherence to ACA rules adding cost and complexity to the practice of medicine.

‪The ACA pretty much drove small medical practices out of business. They had no choice but to merge with larger medical groups or hospitals meaning that a doctor hanging out a shingle and seeing patients on his or her own all but disappeared.

The quality of care decreased because now you may see one of four or more doctors none of whom know your name. None of them interact with you as a person and all of them are diagnosing / prescribing based on data in your chart, not actually knowing you as a living breathing human being.

Half the time they’re not listening and in some cases it’s questionable if they fully understand what you’re saying due to language barriers. You’re just one of a thousand bodies parading through an office in a given week.‬

‪Fixing this system isn’t about supplementing it with taxpayer’s dollars. Fixing this system is about bringing it to heel.

One way to start that might be for everyone that can, to stop buying the insurance companies fear. Switch to self pay and then negotiate fair pricing from medical practitioners.

Another possibility is to demand upfront pricing so that a patient knows it will cost X dollars for a procedure. If you see an MD it’s $100 /hr (And you get their FULL attention, no more playing with their computers). Blood work costs X dollars for a comprehensive panel. X-rays? What does it cost for materials+the hourly rate for the technician+the hourly rate for a doctor to look at the X-ray. There was a time when a film X-ray cost $50 flat. Why does where you have any testing done affect the bottom line cost? Just crossing county lines can have a 30% differential.‬

‪Why is it that we all have blood work done, but if you ask them to tell you what your blood type is, they want to charge you another fee? They’re already there, they’ve got the lab, the samples, and the typing cards. Shouldn’t we all know our blood type as a matter of safety?‬

‪These are the kinds of questions that should be asked.‬

‪You want the government to do something about healthcare? Then have them run audits and accounting to determine the real costs of care. ‬Then move forward to make changes beneficial to the American people, not the insurance companies.

You wouldn’t continue to pump gas into your car from a leaky gas pump, why do people think it’s okay to keep pumping tax dollars into a system that is leaking money like a sieve and providing poor services?

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I know it’s tax season but dang!!!!

IRS Thieves.So it’s tax season.

Everyone is “thrilled”. Especially now that we know that 100 billion of our taxes went “Missing” miraculously in transit to Ukraine. Then we’ve seen how more of money has been wasted by USAID and God only knows what other B.S. departments within our government.

What I’m saying is everyone is cranky. Myself included.

This has bearing on me, because I’m trying to locate either an application that I can use to plug in the finite numbers of my income, interest paid, medical expenses, etc. have this super powerful computer in my lap, do the freaking math, then print out the results on a form to mail to the freaking Tax collectors Federal & State.

Or someone to do my taxes that doesn’t add $300 to $1000 to my already overly expensive taxes, which feel like forced donation to a bunch of clowns with zero respect for the American People.

You’d think this would be simple. You’d be wrong!

I read reviews. I’ve been reading reviews about TurboTax (who by the way annoy me because their website tells me to login to a nonexistent account when I try to purchase their software and doesn’t have a provision to create the account. So if they can’t get a website software right, do I have faith in their ability to actually do my tax math right? Perhaps Not!)

It seems that I’m not alone in questioning TurboTax, but others are flat out livid that the applications both desktop and mobile don’t work as advertised and that they nickel & dime you to death to boot.

Then there’s H&R Block. I used them many years ago and was okay with them. Keyword, many years ago… Their reviews are also not particularly favorable. For the same reasons as TurboTax. Unexpected add on fees. Malfunctions in the applications. One review said that the IRS was rejecting the H&R Block filing because the SS and DOB didn’t match IRS records. H&R Block was not only unhelpful, but downright dismissive and apparently didn’t refund the e-filing fee either.

TaySlayer? They too have strings of nasty reviews. Agin citing unexpected fees, application / web site problems and unresponsive customer support. 

To be fair, when I’m looking at reviews I sort them by “most recent”. Given the general crankiness of the American people at Tax time, coupled with what appears to be stratospheric corruption in the government. Perhaps the reviews are more negative because the folks reviewing these applications or agencies are just really pissed off.

Nonetheless, for someone like me that has used an accountant to do my taxes for the past 30+ years…

It makes things more difficult.

Update: Less than an hour after posting this. Costco sent me an email that said I could get TurboTax through them for ~ $60.

That was by far the best price I’d seen and since all the tax programs were about the same price, $80 – $90 I jumped on the discount from Costco.

My taxes are done. I haven’t sent anything yet. 

I’ve got a multiyear tax mess that I’m fixing and I need to get previous years editions. I want to make sure that the previous stuff doesn’t affect the current data. I don’t think it will but I’m mistrustful of anything associated with the IRS.

Honestly, I’ve been terrified of the IRS and taxes for my entire adult life. Part of that is the way the IRS dealt with my father and stepfather when they’d made mistakes. In the case of my stepfather the mistake wasn’t his.

It was a company he worked for who was purchased. Both companies sent W-2s the purchasing company neglected to check the amended box on the 2nd W2 stating that the 2nd simply changed the name of the company to the IRS which doubled his income. It took 6 months for him to get the IRS to understand what happened. It took corporate attorneys, and all manner of accountants, plus time off from work.

Those memories made unwilling to attempt to do my own taxes when it was just paper, and a calculator. Over the years, it became habit and I thought nothing of it until last year when my accountant really dropped the ball.

This by the way was the second time he’d screwed up in 20 years and both times cost me a shit ton of money. He of course danced away without even a “Sorry about that.” Last year he screwed up the calculation on my state return as well.

So this baggage was on my mind as I fired up my brand new Turbotax. Interesting thing is that the program asked me to create an account, unlike their screwy website that wouldn’t allow a purchase without an account and wouldn’t let me create one.

I sat here for about 2 hours maybe a little longer because I had to dig up some bits of information. In the end, after I’d put all the data in, and answered the questions the program asked, Turbotax put my super powerful computer to the math tasks for about 5 – 10 seconds.

The CPU didn’t even breathe hard. It looked like the program reached out to verify some rules or something because there was a data burst on the router.

Then bingo. 

Everything was finished. The program ran a probability of audit based on the data provided and gave me a near zero possibility. 

The requisite information was transferred to the state tax subroutines. There were a few more questions then another 5 -10 seconds and bingo the state was done too.

I smiled. This is what a super powerful computer is supposed to do!

Something else changed too.

I can do this crap! My computer and I can handle it. 

1/4 of the load was taken off my mind. The remaining 3/4 I can do. Although, the last 1/4 might be a bit of a challenge. I’m confident.

And because I hate the IRS and state taxation… I’m mailing in hardcopies. Maybe next year, I’ll e-file. But why should I make it easy for them?

I’m paying for the software, I paid for the computer, I’d have to pay a nominal fee to e-file. Seems to me the IRS and State should take $100 off our taxes for making their job easy by transferring the preprocessed data directly to their computers.

Maybe I’m being petty.

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Janet Yellen says Trumps Tariffs instead of Federal income tax, would make life unaffordable..

The Article is here

Janet Yellen.Since she’s been wrong on just about every single thing over the past 3 years, I cynically wonder if I should, as a matter of course, invert anything that comes out of her mouth.

I also wonder if she meant unaffordable for the Federal Government? My assumption is that if the Federal Government was 1/3 its current size and functional, that perhaps the tariff idea would work.

It’s not just about taxes. It’s about the horrific inefficiency of the Federal Government. It’s about the way our leadership spends money like drunken sailors. They remind me of a shopping addicted, depressed housewife with a credit card watching QVC all day long.  Believe me, that’s a combination that you do not want.

In the case of our government, we don’t ever see the UPS guy delivering boxes of crap that end up being returned or just going right in the trash can. Our government has found that dumping our money directly in the trash is far more expedient.

You might think I’m being funny. I’m not. I’ve seen first hand what the husbands of shopping addicted folks have to put up with. I’ve seen the stress & strain, the haunted look on a man’s face when the credit card bills keep rolling in and the house is filling with useless crap. I’ve witnessed the fights, the divorces, the “discovery” of a whole bunch of joint credit cards a guy didn’t know his spouse had opened.

It’s not much of a stretch to describe the American Taxpayers as the abused breadwinner being saddled with ever increasing debt by a spouse who insists on buying the Pretty Polly collectors edition faux porcelain doll with genuine agate buttons for only $495. Followed by the same Pretty Polly in a different color dress with genuine synthetic azurite buttons for $595. Both can be purchased together for $1550 and you get free shipping with a certificate of authenticity. 

Our government has forgotten that they’re supposed to provide Value for the dollars they’ve spent. Lately, all we’ve gotten for the taxes they’ve burned so frivolously is the equivalent of a shitload of Pretty Polly dolls, and a maxed out credit card at 22% interest.

Janet Yellen reminds me of the woman who, after the divorce, decides to part with her collection of Pretty Polly dolls, only to discover that every single version she purchased with its “Certificate of Authenticity” is available on eBay for .10 + $22.95 shipping and that she’s not going to be able to pay the rent.

Eventually the Federal Government will reach a point that the American Taxpayer demands a divorce. The manner in which that happens remains to be seen.

The Federal Government in general and this Administration in particular have done more to make the American People turn away in disgust than any time I can remember. 

That being said, I watched the Watergate scandal and Nixon’s resignation.