jeff yen

Every year, as I slowly grind my teeth into nubs while working on my taxes, I reflect on how monumentally idiotic our tax code is.

This is not unlike my sudden passion for overhauling our traffic enforcement regulations every time I get a parking ticket, so you may want to keep that in mind if you decide to press on.

I spoke with a friend of mine in Norway recently, and explained my dread at the prospect of doing my taxes this year. He seemed puzzled, so I pressed for details. He told me the entirety of his tax filing process was to visit a website and click a button that said “Yes.”

Now, I can’t really believe it’s all that simple for every Norwegian, but seriously now. I was wading through armfuls of receipts and check registers all day today, and I feel like I’ve been run through a shredder. The tax code is so ludicrously convoluted that companies make enough money helping people figure it out for three months a year that they can essentially go on vacation for the other 9 months and still stay in business.

Now that I am — at least nominally — operating as a business, things get even more complicated. I have to keep written records for everything. When I drive around on business, I have to note down how far I drove, on what day, and so on. I’ve gotten into the habit of buying things almost exclusively from a rapidly narrowing collection of online stores, just so I have a built-in log of receipts. I think I’m just going to have to accept the fact that I’ll be a gibbering madman for a few days out of every year from now on.

When I started this morning by just tallying up my gross income, my combined state and federal income taxes weighed in at about $27,000.

That’s right.

I basically owed a well-equipped Japanese roadster to the federal and Californian governments, one of which just lost 350 billion dollars up a few banking CEO’s asses, and the other of which is so far up shit creek that it’s issuing IOUs to its employees and creditors.

My street is full of potholes.

I pay an arm and a leg for my own health insurance, which does its damnedest not to cover any actual illnesses.

Every time I pass by the DMV, there’s a line wrapped around the building.

At various times over the course of the past few years, I have been unable to eat strawberries, spinach, tomatoes, and peanuts because they can’t seem to comprehend the notion that if someone takes a dump in a tub of food, maybe you shouldn’t let them sell it for money.

The only time I’ve seen a cop do something useful lately is when a CHP officer gave me a speeding ticket.

Our deployed military is killing itself off faster than enemy combatants are, and goons from the Paleolithic era are collecting government salaries just to shine flashlights in our eyes as we drive past the airport terminal.

…

Honestly? I owe these fucking clowns money?

As I told a friend while taking a break from beating my head against the floor, I imagine it would be more cost-effective to buy myself a Congressman and have him excrete some kind of tax exemption for me.

Oh shit, I think this is how Republicans are born.