I heard yesterday that the IRS is understaffed, answers only 40% of its calls, that the usual wait time is an hour, and then people are referred to their “brick and mortar” sites and wait in lines for hours. Why do we put up with such annoyances?
I would wonder, aloud and in print, what would happen if only 40% of us complied with filing said taxes. Then I would wonder what that huge bureaucracy is doing all day. Then I would wonder at why we, as the American public, are not outraged by the lack of service.
We personally had this agency knock at our door with an audit, the year after we moved to Florida. In the ensuing months of record tracking, hours of meticulous searching through records and providing evidence of our honorable filing, we were compliant, diligent, while frustrated. In the end, not only was our file accurate, but we discovered through the process we were owed BY the IRS. Did we receive an apology, or even an acknowledgement. NO!
The Linda Lerner controversy is enough to make people’s blood boil. The fact that we need to work until late May to satisfy our taxes, some 30% for the usual workers, is appalling.
Yet, would I want to live in any other country in the world. NO! By God’s grace I am living in the greatest age in the greatest country in the world. Do I like paying taxes, even on the social security I paid all my working life and now have to pay taxes on? Perhaps unfair, but acceptable. Do I get upset that people who do not contribute at all to the economy by working, get tax refunds while we usually have to pay more? Well, yes. So be it. That’s life. I’m done ranting.
Happy April 15th.
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