Tax Deposits and GSA Parties

I'm just now walking back into the house after toodling out to my mailbox with two envelopes.  Those envelopes are now on their way to the IRS and to the Commonwealth of Virginia, and they total $11,500 that I have been working hard to earn the past three months.

Yes, boys and girls, it is "ES" time, that week every three months when consultants like me, as well as the widows living on their savings, and other Americans, have to send checks representing estimated tax obligations to our nation and our state, along with the 1040-ES form ensuring we know how much the IRS thinks we are going to owe at the end of the year, broken into four easy installments.

I don't object to that.  "Normal" employees who get W-2s already have tax withheld from their paychecks, and we who do not certainly should not be treated any differently.  By the time we file our 1040s next April, we should have already paid in, through estimates, about what we owe, so as to be no less unfairly treated than anyone else.

But here's the thing.

When you do pay estimates, you find yourself writing some big, fat checks to the Federal Government, and it makes you think about it.  A lot.  After all, the poor folks who get W-2s never really see their tax payments; they're withheld and the paychecks are what's left.  They don't write checks much, and maybe don't feel it.

Well, I feel it.  I feel it to the extent that as I walked back from the mailbox, $11,500 lighter in the wallet, I started thinking about where some of that $11,500 is going, and my blood pressure started to rise a bit.

- Some of it is going to pay for a pension for Lois Lerner, who pleaded the 5th before a congressional committee investigating her, for corruptly targeting conservative groups for special mistreatment by the same IRS that is the payee on one of those checks I wrote.  No; I can't be really happy about that.

- Some of it is going to pay the salaries of the Department of Veterans Affairs employees who should have, but have not yet been fired, even though they showed themselves to be, at best, incompetent in their treatment of the men and women who have served our country.  I'm OK with some of my check going to pay for the veterans' care, but not real happy that incompetents, who should have been fired after the new Secretary took over, are getting some of my $11,500 every payday.

- Some of it is going to pay for remarkably stupid uses, like the $50,000 that went to the Hawaii Department of Agriculture to support the Hawaiian Chocolate Festival, certainly a questionable use of taxpayer dollars, given that (A) it only affects one state, and (B) it's plain stupid.

- Some of it -- too much -- will no doubt go to Federal employee boondoggles like the parties that your friends and mine at GSA used $822,751 of our money for (see picture).

GSA regional commissioner Jeffrey Neely, au naturel, enjoying the view of the Las Vegas Strip from his bathtub as he "soaks" the taxpayers for the cost of an extravagant conference held there

There will be a decent chunk of my check used, fortunately, for Constitutionally-mandated functions of the Federal government, like defending our shores, printing money, regulating interstate commerce and some day for permitting the Keystone XL pipeline (OK, I can dream).  But there's nothing like writing a fat check to the IRS in the middle of June to make you think about where it's going.

And dang, there's a lot to get you steamed when you do.  I think I'll take a bath.

Copyright 2015 by Robert Sutton
 Like what you read here?  There's a new post from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com at 10am Eastern time, every weekday, giving new meaning to "prolific essayist."