BS: Tax Refund--What will you do with it?

Subject: Tax Refund--What Plans?
From: Don Firth
Date: 15 Jun 01 - 05:55 PM

I just finished listening to Ross Reynolds' call-in show on KUOW (one of Seattle's NPR affiliates). Reynolds had a pretty interesting question for his listeners today. Here it is, verbatim, off KUOW's website:

Next month, the government will start sending out refund checks as part of the $1.35 trillion Bush tax cut. What will you do with the money? Join The Conversation today at 1:00pm.

Provided you paid federal income tax you should be expecting a check from the government ranging somewhere between 300 and 600 dollars, depending on your marital status. Do you have any idea what you'll do with the money? Maybe you'll be heading to a casino, and putting it all on black. Or sending a donation to the Democratic National Committee. Will you stuff it in your mattress? Or give it a homeless person? We want your submission, no matter how selfish or noble. What are your plans for your tax refund check?

Several people had some pretty interesting plans for the money. One person said he would use it to start paying off his student loan. Another said that he was going to donate it to the Sierra Club. A woman said she was going to donate it to Planned Parenthood. Another said she would donate it to a pro-choice group in the name of a well-known anti-abortionist so he would receive a thank-you letter from the organization and be on their mailing list. Several people were just going to piddle it away on whatever. One jolly fellow said he would stick it in the bank to gain some interest, then when the time comes, he would donate it to whatever candidate had the best chance of beating George W.

Okay. Anybody?

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: Tax Refund--What will you do with it?
From: mousethief
Date: 15 Jun 01 - 06:25 PM

Use it to re-balance the ol' checkbook after overspending on books and such earlier this spring.

Alex

Subject: RE: BS: Tax Refund--What will you do with it?
From: Bert
Date: 15 Jun 01 - 06:33 PM

I'll probably use it to buy gas.

Subject: RE: BS: Tax Refund--What will you do with it?
From: Joe Offer
Date: 15 Jun 01 - 06:35 PM

...use it to cover ten percent of what I lost on the stock market this week...

Subject: RE: BS: Tax Refund--What will you do with it?
From: kendall
Date: 15 Jun 01 - 07:14 PM

I will have a better idea of what to do with it if and when it comes, and, depending on the REAL amount. I'll believe it when I see it.

Subject: RE: BS: Tax Refund--What will you do with it?
From: Banjer
Date: 15 Jun 01 - 07:15 PM

I don't count my chickens before they hatch. When I get the check into my grubby little paws, then I'll think of what to do with it.

Subject: RE: BS: Tax Refund--What will you do with it?
From: Bill D
Date: 15 Jun 01 - 07:16 PM

STOCK market? You mean that big roulette wheel up in New York where you pick numbers according to arcane formulas and hints from guys who make a living giving advice, because they can't pick the right stocks?

Subject: RE: BS: Tax Refund--What will you do with it?
From: Robin2
Date: 15 Jun 01 - 07:33 PM

pay all my other taxes

Subject: RE: BS: Tax Refund--What will you do with it?
From: Sorcha
Date: 15 Jun 01 - 07:37 PM

Get it in my hot little hands first!! Then, since it's "found" money, tapes, CD's, tunes, books, Mudcat donations.........I too will believe it when I see it.

Subject: RE: BS: Tax Refund--What will you do with it?
From: Amergin
Date: 15 Jun 01 - 07:38 PM

dont make enough to get a bleeding check

Subject: RE: BS: Tax Refund--What will you do with it?
From: Burke
Date: 15 Jun 01 - 07:39 PM

I was going to ask the same question! I'll either give it to Oxfam or give it back to help reduce the national debt.

Subject: RE: BS: Tax Refund--What will you do with it?
From: JenEllen
Date: 15 Jun 01 - 07:40 PM

Not to put too fine a point on it, but I'll believe it when I hold the check in my own two mitts.
I can't say as I've really missed the money, so if it does happen then I'll probably end up putting it back out in donation to the local library or farm worker's clinic.

Subject: RE: BS: Tax Refund--What will you do with it?
From: MarkS
Date: 15 Jun 01 - 11:10 PM

Don't know just what yet, but I will find something. Isn't that the point though? I will decide what to do with it. Or at least my wife will.
MarkS

Subject: RE: BS: Tax Refund--What will you do with it?
From: DougR
Date: 15 Jun 01 - 11:54 PM

Maybe I'll donate it to Senator Jefford's re-election campaign. Or maybe I'll by a sympathy card for Kendall and Al Gore (I'm not talking Hallmark here), or maybe a pacifier for Senator John McCain, or ...oh gosh, the choices are unlimited.

DougR

Subject: RE: BS: Tax Refund--What will you do with it?
From: YOR
Date: 16 Jun 01 - 12:18 AM

Everybody sounds really excited about it, NOT! With this years natural gas bill and now air conditioning season, its gone.

The government will say its my fault, I like comfort toooo much. How dare me.

Baby needs a new pair of strings! Roy

Subject: RE: BS: Tax Refund--What will you do with it?
From: Gypsy
Date: 16 Jun 01 - 12:20 AM

Well, with the death of the mother in law, who had the audacity to keep her property that she purchased in the 1960's, will spend all of it, and more in taxes. Don't ever think that only 2% of the population pays inheritance tax! Or that they are rich! gypsywhoisstillroyallypissedatpayingdeathtaxes!

Subject: RE: BS: Tax Refund--What will you do with it?
From: GUEST,mmm
Date: 16 Jun 01 - 12:42 AM

like everyone else i will belive it when i see it but just in case i do get one i will cash it quick before it bounces

Subject: RE: BS: Tax Refund--What will you do with it?
From: katlaughing
Date: 16 Jun 01 - 01:03 AM

They won't send us one. They will send us a note which says it has been applied to the self-employment taxes we didn't make enough money to pay back in the late 1980's, which we have a payment arrangement on and which they apply all of our refunds to. The years that they've charged us for we didn't even make enough to have to owe any income tax, let alone buy food, pay rent, etc. And, of course, by this time, the interest and penalties, which they charge every month, have more than doubled the orginal debt. We will pay on it until we are old and shuffle off the mortal coil.

Sorry, rather a sore subject at our house. Those were the same years a business contract with a governor in Venezuela was not honoured, leaving us with $20,000 never paid for work rendered and our government could do nothing to help except send me 20 pages of the names of lawyers in Caracas who dealt in US/VZ legal matters.

Sorry...kat

Subject: RE: BS: Tax Refund--What will you do with it?
From: DougR
Date: 16 Jun 01 - 01:13 AM

Well, Gypsy, I suppose you know who you can blame for that, right? No, not the republicans. The democrats can't let an opportunity (even death) slip by without imposing a tax. It's just their nature. :>)

DougR

Subject: RE: BS: Tax Refund--What will you do with it?
From: BlueJay
Date: 16 Jun 01 - 02:13 AM

Good question, I don't know. I'm still afraid to do my taxes. I've filed an extension. Due to a stupid, but innocent oversight on my part, I owe the IRS about two thousand dollars which I can't pay.

There's a guy in Philadelphia who never refunded me my two thousand dollars for products never sent. He simply filed for bankruptcy. I was relying on that refund to pay my taxes, and last I heard, he was still driving around Philly in his Cadillac.

I'm pretty much fucked. I have filed a claim in the courts, but that will likely take years. I'll probably never receive even a fraction of the money he stole. But you can be sure the IRS will hound me till long after I'm dead to recoup their losses.

Maybe Forrest Gump's $600 tax cut will help, but not much. I would happily refuse it as my part to pay for meaningful health care reform, if the upper income recipients of Alfred E. Neuman's largesse did the same. I wonder why I doubt that this will happen?
Forrest!
Forrest!
Forrest!

Subject: RE: BS: Tax Refund--What will you do with it?
From: Uncle Jaque
Date: 16 Jun 01 - 03:29 AM

According to A'nt Mahtha, who handles all of our finances (if you'd ever seen me try to balance a checkbook, you'd know why), we might get back around $100. That will help pay off the State of Maine (#1 combined individual tax burden in the US.. Welcome to the People's Republic of Maine, Komrades!) who demands another $500 out of us on top of the $2K or so they've already extorted. Our Town just passed a $23 Million (before interest, overruns and graft) bond to rebuild our no-longer fit-for-Yuppi-kids Centers of Public Indoctrination, so we can look forward to at least $500 more a year in property taxes. Thank you, NEA - who dutifully ordered all the Teachers to lean on Parents to "get out the vote"; and so they did. "Socioeconomic Cleansing" marches on along the coast of Maine. Pretty soon it'll all be like FL ; you'll have to be a Millionare (at least) to live within 2 miles of the seacoast. Places like Cape Elizabeth, Falmouth, Wiscassett etc. have pretty much been that way for quite some time.
Say, do any of you who have the IRS on you like flies on a dead horse have any idea when the last time Jessie Jackson (the Revvvruund) got audited, despite his flagrant abuse of "non-profit" status and millions in essentially extorted funds? Oh!; Wait!: Is that a cricket I hear cheeping out in the barn????
Some folks never ceace to amaze me; We finally get a fella in Washington who tries to ease that rusty old crowbar of beauraucracy about an inch out of our *(ahhem...)* checkbooks... and they get madder'n Hell at him, and start screaming "Put it back in!!!! Quick!!! Put it back!!!"

Products of the American "Public Education" Industry, no doubt.

Subject: RE: BS: Tax Refund--What will you do with it?
From: DougR
Date: 16 Jun 01 - 01:41 PM

Bluejay: you will probably be lucky to get back twenty to thirty cents on the dollar, if anything at all. Even if you win a judgement, there is no assurance you can collect.

I think the IRS will let you set up a payment plan by the month or quarter or something like that though.

DougR

Subject: RE: BS: Tax Refund--What will you do with it?
From: Lonesome EJ
Date: 16 Jun 01 - 03:08 PM

Use it to pay part of my back taxes for last year, probably.

Subject: RE: BS: Tax Refund--What will you do with it?
From: katlaughing
Date: 16 Jun 01 - 03:43 PM

BlueJay, I have to say all of the individual IRS people I've dealt with have been really nice and they will let you set up a payment plan. It has been my experience that they really do want to work with people as much as their red tape will allow.

If you CLICK HERE you will find information on what to do if you cannot pay, etc.

Good luck,

kat

Subject: RE: BS: Tax Refund--What will you do with it?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 16 Jun 01 - 04:05 PM

Uh-huh. Right. (sarcasm) I am Canadian, so I am not in this particular picture. This spring I paid about $8,000 in taxes, which more or less wiped out my savings. Thank God I am more careful than some people I know, and actually planned ahead so that I had that money (I'm self-employed) when it was needed. My accountant has a client who discovered to his dismay that he owed $20,000 this year...and he didn't have more than $2,000 in his account to pay it with. He is now negotiating with the tax people on how he can pay it slowly in installments. He'll probably still be trying to pay it off many years from now when they bury him, assuming his surviving relatives can afford the funeral expenses, etc....

The Conservative Mike Harris government in Ontario here campaigned several years ago on a glorious promise of "tax cuts"...their particular mantra. People were impressed and voted for them (well, about 46% of the people voting did, which was enough to give them a big parliamentary majority, anyway...I spit in derision!).

Their legacy now is: a devastated and demoralized hospital and school system, a much less regulated and fast deteriorating system of ecological protection, an alienated and cowed workforce, many more homeless on the streets and in the hostels, more despair on every hand except in the boardrooms of banks and major corporations...which are doing quite well, yes, very well indeed, while everyone else goes down.

And...they sent a $100 check last year to everyone in Ontario, including me, which was what they supposedly "saved" (over about 4 years) by all the tax cuts. Ha! For having our society crippled and gutted we get $100. I used that $100 to buy food.

They gave a little teeny sack of money to Judas too, remember? Call it a tax cut from the Pharisees. Maybe he voted for Mike Harris. I heard he hanged himself the very same evening, after considering what that cash was really worth, and how far it would get him.

You're being lied to, people. They throw you a couple of mouldy crumbs while billionaires walk away secretly with the banquet. Their efforts are not on behalf of either small business or of the ordinary citizenry of this land. They are a betrayal of both conservative and liberal principles of social democracy.

If people were more cognizant of what's really going on worldwide (a billionaire's military-industrial-financial oligarchy), there would be a world revolution that would make 1776 and the French Revolution look like playground squabbles.

And it would scorn the deluded idealogues of both right and left who are content to fiddle with their partisan deck chairs, and pretend they are doing something, while our collective ship goes slowly down.

The Left and the Right are both utterly bankrupt at this stage in history. We need something totally new this time. Something neither one of them has shown the moral courage to even consider thus far.

- LH

Subject: RE: BS: Tax Refund--What will you do with it?
From: DougR
Date: 16 Jun 01 - 04:17 PM

Like (Gulp) Communism, L.H.?

Subject: RE: BS: Tax Refund--What will you do with it?
From: Lonesome EJ
Date: 16 Jun 01 - 04:42 PM

He's just saying this particular Thesis is in immediate need of an Anti-thesis, Doug, as you know if you've read your Marx. I would agree, but I'm not sure Communism is the necessary Anti-Thesis, having failed quite publicly already.

Subject: RE: BS: Tax Refund--What will you do with it?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 16 Jun 01 - 04:59 PM

Nope, Doug, NOT Communism! That is the worst example of the failure of the Left, as our present money-dominated corporate system is the worst example thus far of its particular form of insanity...because it is presently threatening the collapse of both the ecological and the social fabric of the whole world. The Communists and the Capitalists have both blown it. You see, the problem with both of those systems is this, in a nutshell: They pretend to serve the people, when in fact they serve only the very few people at the top...and toss crumbs and propaganda to the rest...and demonize some exterior enemy to keep people distracted, and keep weapons production rolling...to the benefit of the very few at the top.

I am suggesting something like...a world-wide Bill of Rights for a start, enforcable through an effective world justice system on an equal basis everywhere, but I really don't want to get into this on a public forum. I'd rather PM you if you are seriously interested in discussing it. I could then suggest possible reading that would be probably more persuasive and useful than my hurried typings on the subject.

- LH

Subject: RE: BS: Tax Refund--What will you do with it?
From: Lonesome EJ
Date: 16 Jun 01 - 05:07 PM

I like your Bill of Rights idea, Hawk, but my cynical nature tells me that economic concerns trump socio-political ones almost every time. Money is, and has always been, power. The challenge becomes attempting to de-construct the Corporate Congomeration that currently maanages the world economy. How do you put that Genii back in the bottle?

Subject: RE: BS: Tax Refund--What will you do with it?
From: marty D
Date: 16 Jun 01 - 06:27 PM

Well I'd LIKE to buy a good banjo, but I guess it will just go in the bank.

marty

Subject: RE: BS: Tax Refund--What will you do with it?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 16 Jun 01 - 07:09 PM

Agreed, LEJ. You can't put the genii back in the bottle at this point. I'm afraid it is just going to come to the point where the bottle runs dry...or explodes. And then the genie will find that he has run out of friends, and that not even vast amounts of money will buy him a safe harbor any longer. It's not an optimistic forecast, I'm afraid.

Personally, I'd rather have the space aliens just invade and depose the present leadership of this world, but they seem to be far too decent and noninterfering to do us the favour so far.

(sigh...) You can decide for yourself whether or not I'm serious on that one...

- LH

Subject: RE: BS: Tax Refund--What will you do with it?
From: mousethief
Date: 16 Jun 01 - 07:14 PM

Those stupid, sex-crazed aliens only want to land in out-of-the-way places and do anal probes on hayseeds. They're obviously not interested in politics at all.

Alex

Subject: RE: BS: Tax Refund--What will you do with it?
From: Spud Murphy
Date: 16 Jun 01 - 08:05 PM

The Great Depression happened because the economic parameters of that time allowed too little money to be retained by the mass of humanity whose hands were the medium for the production of that wealth.

We are now heading at warp speed for the exact same set of circumstances. May God have mercy on your souls.

When will we ever learn?

Look down a thread or two and find the greatest display of ignorance I can imagine: "DO WE STILL NEED UNIONS?"

Been there....Done that....Don't need no more!

Spud (Old enough to have seen the last one first hand.)

Subject: RE: BS: Tax Refund--What will you do with it?
From: Donuel
Date: 16 Jun 01 - 08:07 PM

Probably buy a Snappy audio video software upgrade, Then there was hackpaw that got some IRS hackers software and uploaded himself another "refund"

Subject: RE: BS: Tax Refund--What will you do with it?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 16 Jun 01 - 08:30 PM

Alex - LOL! Don't believe that sex-crazed aliens assaulting hayseeds crap. That's just a favourite Hollywood stereotype, perpetuated in a host of silly movies and silly magazine stories. Whether it has ever happened, I don't know...maybe...but if so, it's a minor wrinkle or anomaly in a VERY big picture.

It does not impinge much on the eyewitness accounts already given in great number to the National Press Corp in Washington D.C. recently (May 9, 2001) by air traffic controllers, military and civilian pilots, radar operators, ex-CIA personnel, and any number of highly qualified professional people who saw UFO's while serving in those occupations, and were not subjected to anal probes or anything of the sort. They have all stated publicly that they WILL testify the same before Congress at any time Congress consents to hear them.

Also, hey come on! I am not a hayseed either. I'm not even particularly inbred! Geez! And them fellers did not even lay a hand on me...nor make an untoward suggestion. They was jes' passin' by, that's all, and I seed 'em from the backyard...and the front yard...and the balcony.

You want to look at some intriguing info...go to disclosureproject.org and check it out. Serious stuff, not movie magazine crap.

Spud - You got that right! Very troubled times indeed. The 3rd World starves to keep us in high-priced sneakers, and our own jobs are vanishing at the very same time.

- LH