Late tax blog

I had intended to write this short blog earlier, but Martha and I have been living between doctor and hospital appointments for the past week. Thankfully, that phase of our lives is about to slow down. Martha has finished her 18 chemo treatments, and has done unbelievably well with them. She has not been sick, has not lost weight, has continued to exercise, but did lose most of her hair. Hers will come back while mine is a lost cause. As I told her, I think that hair is highly over rated to begin with.

I wanted to make just a few comments about income taxes. It always tickles me to hear friends who get excited about receiving an income tax refund. I can't help but think," So, you are excited about getting your own money back from the government that you have loaned them for a year interest free". My goal is to owe them as little as possible, but I would prefer to owe them a little bit. I would not mind paying taxes so much were I not so acutely aware of the pork barrel projects and bloated federal payrolls. I know that I could do a better job of allocating my tax funds than the Garbanzo beans in Washington are doing.

Another thought that occurred to me is that Pop always told me that I should live within my means. I don't know if I could or not because the government will not let me. What I see on my W-2's and what drops to the bottom line as disposable income are two entirely different numbers after Big Brother takes his share. Albert Einstein said that the hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax, and I'm fairly certain that Albert had more IQ in his left index finger than I have in my entire brain. I study my income tax returns diligently, and still can't understand them. I also read this anonymous quote," A fine is a tax for doing something wrong while a tax is a fine for doing something right.

And lastly I would like to quote one of my heroes, and one of the greatest men in the history of the world, Winston Churchill, who said," We contend for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle". Were it not for this great man, we would probably all be speaking German today! I sure would like to see a simplified tax form that the common citizen could understand.

OK, that ends my delayed rant/blog for today. We are all well and busy here at Riverview as this is the quiet before the storm of our sweet corn season. I encourage everyone to buy and eat a lot of sweet corn this summer. We could also use a rain, but that will happen on God's time rather than ours. I have not prayed for rain since the 1994 flood, but I did tell my friends that it was OK for them to pray for it.

I hope everyone enjoys a great spring. As for us, our state critter, the gnat, has rejoined us at Riverview. C'est la Vie!