I got through most of the long list things to do in the blue notebook on my desk yesterday. I was fairly pleased with that- even found out that I could get a booster shot for TDAP- tetanus, diphtheria and pertussis- so I can meet the new Granddaughter without exposing her to any additional risk. That is going to be an exciting encounter, and I am looking forward to it immensely.

There is one little box on the list that I did not get to, and it is not one of the “optional” tasks. Taxes. It has been floating there on the page for weeks.

I am finding that I am way behind the curve on that, and probably should have knocked them out before someone files for a refund in my name. Of course there isn’t one, but that is a separate matter altogether. Now that the Affordable Care Act is once more the law of the land, I heard that the next big conflagration on the Hill is going to be about reforming the tax code. I assume that the banks and their lobbyists have already been working on it to ensure that vital loopholes are inserted in whatever comes next, just as the insurance companies did with RyanCare. Everyone is a winner if they consolidate and insert some transparency into the mind-numbing and impenetrable Tax Code.

As an example, I got dinged by Mr. Koskinen’s merry band of Avengers in 2015 for a grand that I didn’t make. Simple mistake. I had set up a traditional IRA, and failed to report the increase in value caused by the stock market’s steady rise, which will doubtless collapse if there is any alternative place to park money, aside from the Wall Street casino. Ms Yellon seems to be angling to fix that with three interest rate hikes in the last three meetings. It is not much yet, but there are going to be some downstream consequences we are almost certain not to like. But yeah, as to the IRA, I thought it was like the 401k plans, where the money is only taxed if you accept a distribution. Who the hell would know that the Feds tax you on money you have not even touched? Sounds looney to me. But I digress.

The system is too freaking complicated because it was intended to be so. There are so many exemptions and special provisions that the Code amounts to nearly 5,000 pages of fine print. That is a lot less than the 70,000 page total that is thrown around by various partisans, and I have not even started to build the little piles of papers and crumpled receipts to make a stab at the TurboTax wonder machine. Yeah, that is depressing. I m sending this too you from an AOL account and doing my taxes on the same program that has frustrated me for almost twenty years. At some point I am concerned that a Steam locomotive will pull into the Culpeper Depot and haul us all away to a nice quiet place that looks like the set of The Donna Reed Show.

I remember when getting interest on a savings or even a checking account contributed to the miracle of compound interest. Now, not so much and there was talk of copying the Europeans and having a negative interest rate. That effectively means you are paying the bankers to protect your dwindling resources.
Kind of a topsy-turvey world for us old codgers. Oh well, we have to pay our fair share to keep this wonderful crazy Ponzi scheme in perpetual motion. It really is quite dizzying to live in DC these days.

I read that some new leaker walked out of the CIA and NSA with a total of 47 hard drives containing the equivalent of a gazzillion messages, some of them classified. Dennis Montgomery is the guy’s name, and he claims to be a ‘whistleblower,’ rather than just another garden variety leaker. There will ensue another scandal to follow the endless series of incomprehensible serial buffooneries played out on the public stage. It could be informative, I suppose, should I decide to pay attention. The jury is very much out on that, and the chaos that went along with the Repeal-Replace legislation makes me think that the legislative process just doesn’t work any more. It is all in the matter of the minds of the people who are managing the system. If they don’t seem to care, why should we?

It would probably make more sense to just do the taxes and take a nice long walk on an early Spring day. I understand that the taxes are interested in seeing us first.

Copyright 2017 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com.