The Tax Man Can

Before I begin my diatribe, let me admit up front that my yearly tax forms consistently make me feel like an economic dolt. My current understanding of taxes amounts to: "Fill out forms so government can send me refund for being broke." I use the H&R Block online tax thingy every year and I believed everything to be in order as far as my state and federal taxes were concerned.

Then a few weeks ago I received a nice little letter from CENTAX (Central Tax Bureau of PA) telling me that there was an earned income tax audit discrepancy for the 2006 tax year. Apparently I was delinquent in paying my local school district taxes. The tax is a meager 1% deal with a relatively minor penalty. All told, I owe $84. Not all that bad really.

What annoyed me was that I couldn't figure out why I owed school district taxes. One of Mr. and Mrs. Employers' favorite topics of social inequity involves the fact that school district taxes are paid by wealthy and responsible property owners, and they pay for the children of mooching and lazy renters to go to school without having to pay a dime. Being a lazy and mooching less-than-renter, I couldn't figure out why I would owe taxes.

One phone call later, I learned that this particular tax is levied against anyone who earns an income; the other larger tax applies to people with property. And you know what? That's fine. I have no problem paying my share of taxes. In my mind, I never consider my taxed money to be part of my income anyway. It's money that I never had rather than money that the government is taking from me. So fundamentally I have no gripe with CENTAX.

What annoys me to no end is that, once again, the bureaucracy has informed me that ignorance of the law is no excuse... pay up! Typically, if your employer lives in your community, the 1% is automatically taken out of your wages, but if you work in, say, West Virginia while your home address is listed as Kittanning, you have to know intrinsically to pay your local school tax on your own. Maybe everyone else learned in third grade that one must determine his or her own local tax status, but I never got that memo. CENTAX never sent me a letter telling me that owed them money. The local government never sent me a letter telling me to go see my local wage office. Quite simply, I was just expected to know to go pay my local 1% school district tax somewhere somehow.

I'll follow the rules when I know what the rules are. But don't keep the rules secret and then fine my ass when I don't follow them. I'm sure a lot of people learned that local taxes were their own responsibility, but I never did. I'm certainly not the dumbest waste of space in this state, so I'm sure plenty of other people screwed it up too. I half-suspect that they do it on purpose so that they can fine people when they fail to pay up.

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"Let the bears pay the Bear Tax. I'll pay the Homer Tax."