THE DISPLACED MIDWESTERNER EXEMPTION

Like many Americans, whether expat or frontline domestic, since reaching working age I have questioned the mental integrity of the IRS, an annual questionfest whose intensity is heightened after one has lived awhile in Japan among rub-it-in foreigners of other nationalities who gleefully pay no double taxes to their mentally healthy home countries.

That annual event came round again this morning, when my eyes fell upon this line while wading through the 2009 tax year's phonebook-sized "1040 FORMS & INSTRUCTION FOR OVERSEAS FILERS," to wit, form 1040, line 42, Exemptions, which states: "If line 38 is $125,100 or less and you did not provide housing to a Midwestern displaced individual, multiply $3,650 by the number on line 6d. Otherwise, see page 37." The coherence just leaps right out at you.

Mind you, I've never been one to turn down a tax exemption, but I've checked carefully and no matter how I tweak it, I haven't provided housing to a displaced Midwesterner, who at my house would have to be about as displaced as he could get. So I guess I'll just have to multiply $3,650 by the number on line 6d, whatever good that does. Did I mention that this Exemption is offered in the instruction for OVERSEAS filers?

It is also most unlikely that many of my US expat friends here, wherever they live in Japan, are housing any displaced Midwestern individuals, but it just goes to show you how obsessive the Gollums of our econopolity have become. No doubt there's a law somewhere saying that if you house a displaced Midwesterner then you can get a tax credit or a free coupon to Denny's or something, but the fact that they ask it of expats is a good indication of just how far the neomalignancy has advanced, how it has all become intertangled into one globally grossly expanding tax phonebook-producing moneyfeeding hydrabehemoth that has grown beyond control except by those at the top who push the dollarsign buttons and make billions yet pay no taxes. It is the domestic frontliners like you who pay the taxes, and those like us abroad who get the tax phonebooks that beget manic rantings like this, Hahahahahahaha, even though, living abroad, we are not taxed unless we're also rich, in which case we do not pay either, because we're rich! You see how it all holds together, don't you? Hahahahahahaha!

Say-- you look like you might be from the Midwest...