Tax-doing Tip
Jul. 11th, 2020 11:09 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gaudiorSo, I have realized a thing that makes doing taxes way more fun:
1) Figure out how much money you owe the government.
2) Pay it.
3) Figure out how many of the following adorable animals at the National Zoo you just fed.
Like, I am saying, based on a very very very approximate dividing of the National Zoo's national budget by their number of animals that you can feed one of them for a day for every $26 you paid in taxes. This is not accurate at all, because they also spend money on a ton of education and worldwide conservation efforts. But it is a way of making concrete how paying taxes serves the public good, and you are part of the public, and so you are, in fact, paying for a bunch of stuff you would like to pay for.
And for the stuff that you would not like to pay for... hey, did you hear there's an election this November?
--R
Appendix A: These are the animals I have decided I paid for having some dinners:
alpacas
lemurs
bobcats
cheetahs
clouded leopards
fennec foxes
mouse deer
meerkats
red pandas
sand cats
skunks
tigers
coatis
and especially the grey wolves. :)
Appendix B: Here is some other stuff I have decided I paid for: library books, some upkeep on national parks, a fuckload of Covid-19 testing, some upkeep on the water structures in the playgrounds in which Fox likes to frolic, lots of medical care, housing, and food for people who don't have those things, a bunch of school textbooks, part of Ayanna Pressley's salary.
Also the thing where the RMV is like weirdly helpful and efficient lately.Like, the person who sits by the door and makes sure everything in your RMV documents is in good shape before you go and stand in the incredibly long line? I paid for that person to work the last several days I went.
Ooooh, and the software engineer they had to pay for adjusting the website so that you can choose a nonbinary gender on your Massachusetts driver's license, and I hope I tipped them, because they made it super-easy. I renewed my driver's license online and in the "sex" box it now says "x" rather than "f," and I am incredibly happy about that.
1) Figure out how much money you owe the government.
2) Pay it.
3) Figure out how many of the following adorable animals at the National Zoo you just fed.
Like, I am saying, based on a very very very approximate dividing of the National Zoo's national budget by their number of animals that you can feed one of them for a day for every $26 you paid in taxes. This is not accurate at all, because they also spend money on a ton of education and worldwide conservation efforts. But it is a way of making concrete how paying taxes serves the public good, and you are part of the public, and so you are, in fact, paying for a bunch of stuff you would like to pay for.
And for the stuff that you would not like to pay for... hey, did you hear there's an election this November?
--R
Appendix A: These are the animals I have decided I paid for having some dinners:
alpacas
lemurs
bobcats
cheetahs
clouded leopards
fennec foxes
mouse deer
meerkats
red pandas
sand cats
skunks
tigers
coatis
and especially the grey wolves. :)
Appendix B: Here is some other stuff I have decided I paid for: library books, some upkeep on national parks, a fuckload of Covid-19 testing, some upkeep on the water structures in the playgrounds in which Fox likes to frolic, lots of medical care, housing, and food for people who don't have those things, a bunch of school textbooks, part of Ayanna Pressley's salary.
Also the thing where the RMV is like weirdly helpful and efficient lately.Like, the person who sits by the door and makes sure everything in your RMV documents is in good shape before you go and stand in the incredibly long line? I paid for that person to work the last several days I went.
Ooooh, and the software engineer they had to pay for adjusting the website so that you can choose a nonbinary gender on your Massachusetts driver's license, and I hope I tipped them, because they made it super-easy. I renewed my driver's license online and in the "sex" box it now says "x" rather than "f," and I am incredibly happy about that.
(no subject)
Date: 2020-07-11 04:45 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2020-07-11 04:57 pm (UTC)More meerkats, less . . . this.
I am delighted it was super-easy to get the right gender on your driver's license!
(no subject)
Date: 2020-07-11 06:07 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2020-07-11 06:08 pm (UTC)Hurray! ^_^
Excellent strategy
Date: 2020-07-11 06:22 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2020-07-11 08:09 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2020-07-12 02:35 am (UTC)FUCK YES.
(no subject)
Date: 2020-07-13 05:10 pm (UTC)(By "that", I meant this way of thinking about taxes, but an "x" in the driver's licence gender box also sounds really neat.)