... and Taxes

Fitting that a day after Death, I should write about taxes. We did our taxes on Monday night. Of course both of us had looked them over a month or so ago. We had a few hiccups figuring out a couple things. Otherwise, following the instructions from our tax software was fairly easy. I remembered at the last minute that we had installed some insulation and some windows when we remodeled the kitchen and it felt responsible and good to take a tax credit on that.

I really never understood complaining too much about taxes. I mean I can understand some spirited discussion about the tax brackets, the constitutionality of income taxes and the obvious discourse we all need to have about the level of services we want, how to fund them and the problem of graft. But assuming the status quo, if your taxes are high that means you are making money. The more money you make, the higher your taxes are. When faced with the very real possibility of making nothing any given year, I'll take taxes thank you.

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I remember taking Tax Law in law school. Basically, the key issue in that class was how to reduce a client's taxable income. My answer was make less, own less. Every other answer is what is wrong with the system. Sure you can depreciate assets, carry over losses, etc. etc. etc. But if you really hate paying taxes more than you love making money, there solution is right there for you. Making money is okay, paying taxes hurts the bank account a little, but theoretically, I can't help but think that my added tax burden correlates directly to my income and my relative purchasing power. My problem is that I can't find a way to correlate my income to my happiness. Ease maybe, but not happiness.

Death

It is a strange time at home. My four year old is asking a lot about death. It is hard to know how to answer his questions. And though we haven't exactly been letting him watch the news coverage of VA Tech, death is everywhere around us. Only the most whitewashed cartoons do not depict injury or death, and those are hard to come by at times.

Without strong religious beliefs, it is a struggle to answer questions. It takes a lot of mental agility. I have just resorted to telling him that most people live into their 80s (given the current life expectancy in the US) and that that is a long time to live. Since one of his schoolmate's parents died from cancer I have also explained that some people die when they get really sick or are badly hurt. He wants to find a way to keep both mom and dad and the cat and himself alive forever. I just explain that we are trying our best to keep him from getting sick or hurt and teaching him how to keep himself from getting sick or hurt. With regard to dying, I haven't said too much except that living a good life is important and then getting old or sick or hurt is not as bad.

As far as I can tell he just thinks people go away when they die. Since I haven't found the truth to be much different I haven't elaborated on that.