I first published this post in April of 2011. As I'm about to cough over approximately 22% of my 2011 paltry income to the tax man and, in light of the currently political conversation, it seemed a timely post to revisit. Oh, and I may have tweaked it just a bit...
According to that bastion of celebrity gossip, E! News, Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne owe the IRS nearly $2 million in back taxes and the feds have slapped a lien on one of their houses.
Wouldn’t you just love to have that problem? Seriously.
Just think about how much money you’d have had to make to owe a tax bill
of $2 mil. Damn! And to own multiple houses so the tax man has to decide which one to put a lien
on? Why that’s the goddamn American
dream.
I don’t begrudge the Osbournes their good fortune. At least they didn’t rob any workers of their
retirement funds like a certain CEO did while at Bain Capital, or use phony foreclosure papers
to steal people’s homes like the bankers we bailed out. Besides, $2 mil is just the family’s plastic
surgery budget. Hell, Sharon can sell off some
of her Louboutins to cover that paltry sum.
Back in the days when I was writing for television my
income never came near rivaling that of either of these families, but it was nice enough
that every year I wrote out a check to the government for several thousand
bucks. I grumbled, bitched and groaned
about it, but I’d sure as hell like to be writing those checks now.
I’m not one who's all that adverse to paying taxes. I view it a bit of like being a member of an
exclusive country club; the type of
place that has a waiting list of years to get into, where someone damn near has to die for a spot to
open up.
 |
| Riviera Club, Pacific Palisades, California |
A place like that costs big bucks to join, yet members
happily dole out hundreds of thousands of dollars for the privilege of carrying
its highly-coveted card, a flash of which tells the whole world they’ve made
it.
Now imagine the name of the club is America – land of
opportunity from sea to shining sea (if you don’t notice all that oil washed up
on shore) – a venerable cornucopia of abundance and excess to the rest of the
world who waits outside our gates hoping to gain entry, willing to do anything,
risk anything for membership in the land of the free.
Except nothing’s free.
It costs a bundle to keep our club running. Transportation, infrastructure, water and
power, education, wilderness, health care, security – all once the envy of the
world – they cost money. Who would
fork over thousands of dollars to join a club where there were gofer holes on
the golf course, algae in the pool and cracks on the tennis court?
Just like it’s a privilege to belong to an exclusive club,
politics aside, it’s a privilege to get to live in this country. Honestly, I feel like I won the damn lotto
of life. While there are a lot of
wonderful nations on this earth, any number of which I wouldn’t mind living in,
I could have also been hatched in a rural village in Pakistan or the deserts of Sudan.
Taking all that into consideration, I don’t mind paying the
necessary fees to belong to one of the best country clubs on the globe and keep
all it has to offer in tip-top shape.
From past experience, I can honestly say I was happiest when I was paying
the highest taxes. While I’ll do my best
now, without complaint, to scrape together whatever amount I may owe on an
income somewhere in the bowels of the tax code,
I just want everyone else to pay their fair share, too. I’m looking at you, Mitt and Ann.
This week the President outlined a budget that calls for
higher taxes on the people in this country who can most afford it. To those in that tax bracket who may be
tempted to whine about that, I say there are much cheaper clubs you can go
belong to, but if you want your card stamped at Club America, pay
your damn membership fees, consider yourself lucky, and shut the hell up about
it.
Last week, Mitt Romney disclosed that he paid only 14% of his income in taxes. At least on the part not hidden away in "foreign investments." I say if you have so much money that you have to hide some of it, it's not going to kill you to fork over a little more to the country where you were lucky enough to be born.
