Taxes Are Due… But I Won’t Do It The Easy Way

THE SONIC BOOMER

Tax Day has arrived!

I have my taxes all done, but I’m looking forward to driving to the main post office where the letter carriers stand at the curb until midnight, their mail sacks open, like Santa Claus in reverse. If you throw your tax return in there before midnight, it will be postmarked before midnight, and that’s the way I like to do it. Part of the reason is that I like events, and part of the reason is that being part of that gigantic “soup” gives me hope that I will not be audited.

Oh, don’t get me wrong — I have nothing to hide. It’s just that I don’t know what I’m doing when it comes to preparing my taxes. I have help, of course, in the form of an accountant, but even the preparatory work is challenging beyond my skill level.

All year long, I shop with reckless abandon — for myself (and I may as well just throw those receipts in the trash) and for my store (where those precious receipts prove that I have purchased “inventory for resale.”) Because I am in the business of purchasing items for resale, I have gone online and gotten a little slip of paper from the State of Florida that allows me to purchase those items without paying sales tax on them. I love that little slip of paper. But it comes at a price — I have to charge my customers tax and give that money to the government every month.

I seems strange to me. I don’t get it because of the “resale” part. Everything I buy is used (the nature of the antiques biz), and someone else has already paid tax on it once, when it was new. (And, way back when, someone else paid tax on the materials used to make the item.) Further, if it’s so old that it has already been purchased from another antiques store somewhere along the line, that customer paid tax on it then. And yet I am required to charge my customer tax? How many times are we going to tax this thing?

Not to worry, Mr. Tax Collector, I am in total support of taxing the hell out of everything. I mean, I know America was founded on the principle of “No Taxation Without Representation,” and I don’t see anyone in Congress addressing this resale issue, but let me just say that I am fine with that. Whatever you guys want to do is just ducky with me. In fact, maybe there’s some way we can tax this stuff yet again. Maybe we can charge a taxable admission to come into the store merely to look around. Does that sound good?

Just remember, you heard it here first. Maybe I could get some kind of gold star or something for thinking that up. Maybe a “bye” to use in case I get caught in traffic and don’t make it to the post office by midnight.

No? Well, that’s OK too. Whatever you say.