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Letters From North America |
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April 15th…April 15th…April 15th….In case you just woke up from a coma or something…it’s tax time again. You know what tax time is, don’t you? You count how much money you made, how much you spent, how much you have left and then send all of what you have left to the US Government. Or something like that. Somehow I find it significant that the Titanic sank on this day in 1912. It tends to remind me each year that we, also sink on this day. Well, enough of that. Back to our tax discussion. Being a student of words and their meaning, I have performed exhaustive research into the origin of the words associated with Tax collections. First off, I found that the root word for TAX comes from the Roman word for tacks. As in thumbtacks. This of course, leads you to the thought that if you didn’t pay your fair share to Caesar you would be subjected to having tacks punched into your thumbs. I think this is even mentioned in the Bible. It goes something like…”Render unto Caesar, what belongs to him …or else.” I think that’s how it goes, in some versions of the Bible. Anyway, the word tax then evolves into Taxidermy. This, of course, is a combination of the root word, Tack and Dermi. Dermi, being the Latin root word for skin. As in dermatologist or skin doctor. So, if we look at these two root words which have evolved over many, many years, we find that they basically mean to ‘nail your skin to the wall’. I took the liberty of cleaning this up since this is a family newspaper. The real meaning is a little more descriptive, generating from the root word for donkey. Thus, it is fairly easy to see how the IRS got its start. Roman tax collections got a little out of hand and was probably the cause of Rome getting burned to the ground several times. I have once again performed some exhaustive (I am so tired) research and found that most of the fires in Rome started on or about the Ides of April (about April 15th) in the national counting house. So it is entirely possible that Nero wasn’t really responsible at all, he was just in the wrong place at the right time. About this time there was a lot of migration to England to escape the oppressive tax laws. However, the situation wasn’t much better since the English had started debtor’s prisons. So, instead of having your thumbs tacked, you would be bound, kicking and screaming, into a cold, wet, dark, dungeon because you couldn’t pay the government what they said you owed to them. After many years of this, some clerk probably noticed that if you were in debtor’s prison, the government had to feed and house you and you weren’t in any way, shape or form capable of producing any revenue to offset your cost of upkeep. Thus, the idea to ship everyone off to America was born. “Let’s send them over there and let them fend for themselves, and get them off our books.” This probably resulted in someone getting appointed a Baron or Duke or something. So, here they came to this country by the millions. I think it is interesting to note that we existed just fine for over 150 years without an income tax of any sort. Truth to tell, it was probably the immigration of foreign tax collectors in the early part of this century that led to the American income tax. Those British and Roman collectors came over here and saw new ground, fertile territory, just waiting to be taxed. Thus it began all over. Now, we are faced with a governmental agency that has so many rules and regulations, they confuse themselves. As an example of what kind of rules we have to live by, consider this. I received this in the mail on the first of April. “March 15, 2000—-Please file your form by the date shown. If this date has passed and you have not filed, please file your return by March 10, 1999. If we don’t receive your form by that date, we will charge additional interest and penalties.” Now, you tell me what I am supposed to do, since I can’t make heads nor tails of what they are saying or trying to get me to do. Is the form due by March 10th 1999 (3 weeks before it was mailed) or is it due on March 15th of the year 2000? I have no idea. Thank God we are past the thumbtack and debtor prison stage. I think all they do now is take your house or cars. Excuse me I see a wrecker backing up to the garage now. Maybe I should have filed that form in March. Was there an income tax when Chicago burned to the ground? |
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