Another tense moment while preparing my Income Tax

Once again I faced another tense moment while preparing my income tax as I was calculating, and researching ways as to not have to write a check to the IRS this year! Some might say I am part of the 47% that don’t pay income tax and I say “you are right”, but this does not bother me because I pay tax on income in way of payroll tax, ss tax, medicare tax, state tax and local tax so I think that I should be able to find ways (legally and within the rules of course) not to pay income tax!

I squeaked by this year by having the energy tax credit that I was able to deduct, but if not for that I would be writing a check! To top it all off, I already claim zero exemptions and put 15% in my 401K in order to reduce my tax burden and still on the borderline of paying income tax!

So to all of you all that think the 47% that do not pay income tax are dead beat losers that want to live off the government, guess what? I work, do not get a dime from the government and pay a helluva lot in taxes every year through what I produce from work each year and I don’t think this is fair so I will continue to blog about this and write Congress every chance I get until something is changed.  For the record.. I wrote the President asking why my bonus is taxed at a higher rate than my pay and once I again I get no response from a government that is suppose to work for me but I will keep wiring because I am least trying to do something!

The annual theft by the Government of my bonus check!

One again I have received my annual bonus and as usual the government takes their standard 42% in taxes that include; Federal, State, Local, Medicare, and Social Security.  I don’t even look forward to it because I know this will be stolen from me and it is quite disheartening to bust your tail all year and hope this extra money will help me catch up on a few things then I look at the deposit and get angry about it!

I am not one to sit around and complain as I try to take action to express my frustration and in this case I have done so by writing my Congressman and Senator. As can be expected I received less than an adequate response to the unfairness of taking this percentage of my bonus.  In a nutshell I was told I could claim this on my taxes and get in back in a refund. Well guess what.. I can’t!!, This is counted as regular income on my W-2 so I can’t enter this on my income tax in a way to get any type of deduction. As a matter of fact I received a two page letter that gave me the “runaround” on why “my money” was stolen from me!

Let me say, I understand there have to be taxes to run the country but when this government is wasting all this money and we give money to countries like Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq that hate us, want us dead and all the while the people in this country are falling farther and farther behind in trying to make a living!  I have a proposal to make with the government: “Go ahead and take 42% from me but in return I want them to give me back the kind of money they are giving to these countries in the Middle East”.  If all Americans were “given” back the money this country hands to these ingrateful nations, the economy would turn around in 6 months!  As long as the government continues to confiscate money from the citizens at an unfair rate the less incentive we all have to work harder and to be better!

I intend on writing another letter to my Representatives on this issue as I will not give up!! It may never change, but it doesn’t do me any good to just sit here a stew about it and I suggest we all do the same and let Washington know we are watching!

 

Now the Liberals are blaming the Tea Party for the debt ceiling deal!

I have attached an article from Yahoo finance and listened to several talks shows and have been hearing the liberal talking heads blame the Tea Party for the “debt deal” that was forced on the President and how bad it was for the country.  Personally, I don’t know how someone can honestly make this kind of statement and believe it. The Tea Party is the only force right now keeping Obama from spending this country into bankruptcy!

This is not a hard concept to understand; you can’t keep spending money that you don’t have because eventually the bill comes due.  How come the liberals don’t blame their own for starting all these entitlement programs and taking money from the working people and giving it to the ones that don’t work!!  Wake up people, because the President says he wants to take money from the “rich people” and redistribute the wealth but we all know in realty it will not be the “rich people” who have their money taken from them it will be the “working people” who pay the taxes in this country.

President Obama has done exactly what he said he was going to do which is to tear down capitalism and redistribute wealth in this country so in order to cover this up the liberals want to blame the Tea Party for taking the country down the wrong track.  Take your blinders off because the country is already off the track. How embarrassing to lose the AAA credit rating and this happened for the first time under Obama so that is why the Liberals are blaming the Tea Party for this mess because they want to take the light off of Obama for the AAA credit rating being lowered on his watch!

I am not defending the Republicans because they have been in on this out of control spending too but for the Democrats and Liberals to put all this on the Tea Party is completely ridiculous.

http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/daniel-gross/u-credit-rating-victim-gop-sabotage-021622372.html

 

Looks like the middle class is heading for tax increase after all

Last year the President proposed a payroll tax cut which was implemented for working Americans. While not a lot of money the cut is appreciated and every little bit helps.  However, in the debt ceiling agreement the continued payroll tax cut was not included and postponed for discussion at a later time.  To me this should have been a very important part of the discussion because it is possible the Congress would let this sunset and then the middle class would have their taxes raised on the sly to help pay for this continued unnecessary spending. So the Congress could be ready to “stick it” to us again!!

Don’t think the President is off the hook either for continuing to push for a continued payroll tax cut which I appreciate.  As we found out when we filed taxeS last year this increased the income that was brought home and then had to be declared income and taxeS paid so really no one came out ahead.  If the President really wanted to make a good impression not only would he continue to push for an extension of a payroll tax cut, but tell the IRS they are not allowed to collect any tax on the extra money working Americans received through a break in the payroll tax. Maybe instead of turning the IRS loose on Americans we should have them go after Iraq and Afghanistan because with all that money we gave them tax-free, there would be more than enough to close the budget gap!

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/08/01/usa-debt-payroll-idUSN1E77014520110801

The debt ceiling and time for a legitimate third party

The media is all a “buzz” as the deadline of August 2nd looms for a deal to raise the debt ceiling so the United States does not default on its payments and push the world into some kind of  “depression”.!!  Well, I have news for everyone… no way this will happen!  All we have in Democrats and Republicans are a bunch of politicians worrying about themselves and how they can pad their own wallets and their buddies on Wall Street.  And all of this going back and forth between the President and Congress is a “dog and pony show” to make us think there is a looming debt ceiling crisis and they are desperately trying to work it out.  In my opinion it is already worked out, and this posturing is just to pander to the voters to get re-elected for the next election cycle.

A perfect example is the “cut, cap and balance” amendment passed by the House but was defeated in the Senate.  This bill had no chance of making it to the President because this bill was proposed to give cover to the congressman who were elected to bring government under control, but even these congressman knew in the long run that the debt ceiling will be raised and the spending will go on. This bill was passed by the House with a 234-190 but was defeated in the Senate 51-46.

So my point is that our leaders are not looking out for us. They could care less what we want and believe that we are all idiots! The democrats come into power and nothing changes, the republicans come into power and nothing changes!  This is why I believe it is time for a legitimate third-party.  There seem to be a lot of libertarians around but their organization can’t seem to get off the ground. So the alternative is for all of us..the people getting together and finding a way to start a third-party that can get people elected that break the hold the Democrats and Republicans on the power in this nation.  Because until this occurs we will get the same thing year after year…. bigger government, more spending and making sure wall street is taken care of and not main street.

 

Raising the debt ceiling means tax increases for all of us!

This is not only an important issue for the entire country but also at the individual level for all Americans and we should all be very concerned how this issue plays out.  Taxes are of particular interest to me especially several times of year when I receive a bonus or extra pay for being sent on a special work assignment.  In the last month I had to leave town for work where I was paid my regular salary plus extra for the work I was doing while out-of-town.  I already knew the government was going to take “their cut” of my extra pay but it never really hits home until you receive the pay and check stub showing the unreasonable amount the government “steals” from me to waste on a bunch of crap!

Are you ready for this…?? After Federal, State, Local, Medicare, Social Security the government takes 42% off the top!!  This makes me so mad!!  This is why in communist countries nobody cared about working or producing because the government was going to take it from people so they didn’t care.  This is what is happening in this country the government is having to take more money from the working people to give to those that don’t produce and for corporations that don’t pay any taxes!

This is where the “debt ceiling” comes into play.  The U.S. keeps raising the debt ceiling to keep playing this “shell game” with our money.  But now we are just about at the end of this balancing act of continuing to raise the debt ceiling in order to keep this game going and the rest assured any agreement to raise the debt ceiling in exchange for taxing “the rich” will not solve the debt problem.  There are not enough “so-called” rich people” to fix this problem.  The government is going to tax all of us! There have already been rumblings in Congress about them getting their hands on 401k’s because of the billions of dollars in those plans because Congress can’t help themselves when there is a big pool of money laying around because they have to get their hands on it.

Finally, back to the 42% tax on “bonus pay”.. This was the doing of the Clinton administration so this is why he had a budget surplus because Clinton balanced his budget on the back of working Americans and to me this will happen again in order to get the same result. The only thing stopping this government now is the economy is in the tank and 10% unemployment!

My experience today with the Healthcare system

Today my wife had to have outpatient surgery so we arrived at 11:00 o’clock as instructed.  She does have health insurance through her employer and has $500 remaining on her deductible and the hospital had told her on the phone this would need to be paid at registration!!  Now I thought this was crap as even thought she has a deductible and the money was owed we were basically paying for a service that had not been rendered and what if we were not satisfied!!

So in order to let her go ahead and have the procedure and get it over with we put it on the credit card and trust me the service we were provided at the beginning of the day was less than stellar. By the time they had us running from one end of the hospital to the other the surgery was 2 hours late!!  It was obvious if one knew what the other was doing all of this would have occurred on time.  And another thing about having to pay this $500 dollars today is the fact that we have insurance and “work” which is made known to the provider. Rest assured if an illegal walked through the door or somebody with no money I bet they would get treatment and not hassled over $500 as soon as you walk through the door!!

I have never been an advocate of government-run healthcare but because of what I describe above it will most certainly happen.  The illegals and the poor are getting healthcare whether they can pay or not and the folks like us that have insurance are paying out of our pocket or through higher insurance premiums.   So I say go ahead and give these people their healthcare and charge me one premium so every time I go the doctor or hospital I don’t have to pre-pay for services and then be disappointed in the result!

 

Why did President Obama drop the word “Creator”

In a speech the President gave to the Hispanic caucus he attempts a quote from the Declaration of Independence and gets it wrong.   Below is the proper quotation from the Declaration of Independence:  “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”.  In the Presidents speech he left out the section referencing “their Creator” and quoted the rest of the wording as written.

Now when I hear his speech and begin to analyze the question comes to my mind as to why he would do this?  It appears the President is reading from a teleprompter so this tells me “Creator” was left out on purpose by the speech writers, researchers or the President himself.  Then the logical person could possibly make the following two conclusions: 1)The President does not believe in a Creator or he was trying to be political correct and not “offend” anyone by mentioning a “Creator”!

In this situation the President is wrong. The entire quotation from the Declaration of Independence should have been read as it was written.  Regardless if the President does not believe in a Creator or if he was afraid someone would have been offended it does not matter.  This is how our history gets diluted a little piece at a time by things like this. Before you know it we will be told the word “Creator” is not really in the Declaration, or “that is not what Jefferson meant when he wrote the Declaration of Independence”.  Rest assured if the President was quoting some founding documents of Muslims and left out the word “Allah” or something like that all h-ll would break loose.  Oh yeah, and leave it to the media for not reporting on this as they know most Americans would have a fit over this. I have posted the link to the YouTube video and title:

Obama Removes God From The Declaration of Independence

The realities of Obamacare begin to emerge!

I have made several posts on the new healthcare bill and how much it will really cost the working people.  Well as I suspected the realities of what I an others have been saying in terms of an increase in premiums is happening as I type this post and it has happened to our family so that makes me an expert as of today to post about it.  My wife received her healthcare booklet with the different plans she can choose from and the plan she has now has increased 120%…. and to make sure I am clear, yes it has gone up 120%!!  Now, let me say she is in the single plan so the dollar increase is not that significant but in this economy any extra dollars out the door hurt the wallet. We did not choose the couple plan because the premiums have always been large but we figured from last year to this year the couple premium has increased 25%.

As stated previously there needed to be some kind of healthcare reform but my issue with this particular program was the cost and how it was going to be paid for.  Common sense alone would tell anyone that nothing is free and these insurance companies are not going to give out free insurance so guess what?? The people who pay health insurance premiums are going to pay for it.

There could also be an another motive for this.  I do not believe the President and his advisors are stupid people.  In fact, I believe them to be very intelligent and know exactly what they are doing.  I submit they knew all along these premium increases would happen and counted on it so the American people would be upset by this and then the government could say “why don’t you just come over to the government plan, it will be cheaper and better for you than the private sector” and because of the high premiums Americans will have no other choice but to do so. This way the government can say they didn’t force us into, but got us in through the backdoor and locked it!!

Finally, just so you know I did not just blog about this. I call my Congressman, Senator and the White House to let them know about the premium increase.   My health insurance renewal is coming up so I will keep you posted.

Putting the new 17,000 IRS agents to work!

As we move down the road since the passage of Healthcare reform the “slow trickle” of information begins to come out on how healthcare for everyone is going to be paid for and as expected it will be paid for on the backs of working Americans.  New information has just been released that says “over the counter medications can no longer be used under a Flexible Spending Account unless there is a prescription from a doctor”. The new requirements take effect in January 2011 and the IRS has spelled out what needs to be done to meet the requirements.  If you have not guessed already and what some of us knew would happen this change is being made to raise revenue and help pay for premiums of the lower-income uninsured.

Now we know why 17,000 additional IRS agents are being hired, so they can make sure “working Americans” hand over their money to pay for all of this!!  The FSA benefited working people by helping them pay for prescriptions, office visits and over the counter medication and this are slowly being taken away!  We hear our government say “we will tax the rich” to pay for all of this.  Well, I hate to be the bearer of bad news but there are not enough “rich people” to pay for all of this and the plan all along was to have the working people pay for this.  The government has to get revenue from somewhere and the hiring of all these IRS agents is to make sure they get it!  Our only hope is the ballot box so I urge you to continue to vote out the current politicians in office and do this in every election until they get the point that we are all fed up and not going to take this anymore!!  I have linked to the article below.
http://www.workforce.com/section/news/article/irs-says-flexible-spending-accounts-cant-reimburse-otc-drugs.php