This, That, and the Other

Yes, April is tax month in the United States. And that means having to file tax documents with the Internal Revenue Service.

Personally, I find having to file my taxes to be very taxing. Ha! Get it? Filing taxes is taxing. I’m a hoot, right?

Anyway, I haven’t yet filed my taxes because I am going to owe money, both to the federal government and to my state government. And that means having to cut two checks, which is why I’m waiting to the last possible day to actually file.

And this year I am particularly resentful at having to pay federal taxes. Why? Let me count the reasons.

• I don’t like the idea of my tax dollars paying for a wall between the U.S. and Mexico. A wall that no one except the idiot in the in the Oval Office wants. A wall he promised that Mexico would pay for.
• I don’t like how my tax dollars are being used to pay for charter planes, first class tickets, large security details, sound proof phone booths, extravagant furniture, and vacations for members of the Trump family and his cabinet appointees.
• I don’t want my tax dollars going to pay off the federal government’s annual budget deficit, which, thanks to the GOP’s tax law, is set to widen significantly in the next few years, topping $1 trillion by 2020, according to new projections from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.
• Or to pay down the national debt, which has topped $21 trillion, and is expected to soar to more than $33 trillion in 2028, again, thanks to the Republican tax law.
• I don’t want to pay tax dollars to have the head of the EPA dismantle most environmental protections. I don’t want to pay taxes to a government that gives enormous tax breaks to the country’s largest and most profitable corporations while taking aware healthcare from most citizens and while cutting back in women’s health options.
• I don’t want more of my tax dollars to be spent on the military when the U.S. already spends more on defense than the next eight countries combined.
• I don’t want my tax dollars to pay for the Justice Department or Congress to investigate Hillary Clinton. Or to pay for investigations into voter fraud that never actually happened outside of the alternative facts-base world that Donald Trump lives in.

On the other hand, I don’t want to be a martyr. I don’t want to incur the wrath of the IRS or to have U.S. Marshals knocking at my door and hauling me off to prison for tax evasion.

So I guess I’ll bite the bullet, finish my tax forms, write my checks, and go back to doing whatever the hell it is I do these days to keep my mind off Trump, Republicans, and taxes.