Happy tax day, everyone!

I don’t know about you, but I think it’s entirely reasonable – considering that 20% of my paycheck is already withheld for Federal, State, and Local taxes before I even see it; there are property taxes on top of that; there’s currently about a 30% tax on gasoline; I pay a 6% sales tax on everything else I buy – to take my 1040 and, rather than carefully filling it out, scrawling in big Sharpie .44 Magnum bold bad black: NO SOLICITORS.

Only the government can get away with making you do all of the work of tracking receipts, calculating bizarre percentages of disparate lines on separate pages, isolating target numbers in several pages of small-print charts, comparing those numbers to certain utopian ideals, doing it all over again on individual forms for special deductions, and then tell you that by subtracting line 39b(i), subclause 3, paragraph 29-E from line 2 means that they didn’t steal enough from you already, and you owe them even more.

You know how it works in Russia? You remember Russia – the “evil empire” famed for its Socialist ideologies? Here’s how it works in Russia:

Step 1: How much did you earn this year?
Step 2: What’s 13% of that?
Step 3: Mail that in, please.

That’s only slightly more complicated than:

Step 1: Steal underpants.
Step 2:
Step 3: Profit.

The beauty of the flat tax system is that it’s entirely fair. Everyone pays the same percentage. There’s no griping about tax cuts only benefiting the rich, a fallacy that tickles me every time I hear it. If you don’t understand how our current tax system works, look up “Ten Men Went to Dinner.” You’ll see the difference between comparing percentages and comparing actual numbers.

I digressed a bit, and I’ve totally ignored the work that would go into making it a reality, but I really do support a flat tax. The public serpents that represent me in Congress know that I do. I don’t really expect them to act on it, but I’ve participated, so at least I can bitch. Same reason I vote, really.

Next year, the .44 Magnum won’t be a pen.