REVERSE PAVLOV

 

Been having a strange anti-Pavlovian feeling recently, like the absence of a severe headache; I'm not figuratively screaming on a bridge in Norway as I do at this time of year. Couldn't figure out what was causing this ongoing lack of pain in the nethers, until it struck me that I had not received my always-right-on-time Nixon Phonebook this year... Wonder what's up over there; taxes are usually the last thing titular authorities surrender. Is there no one still smirking in those halls of authority?

 

 

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...

THE PERFECT HEIST

"We denounce the international and national economists as complete frauds, crooks and liars who have only their own interests at heart and screw you out of your money any way they can.

We denounce the private bankers as a bunch of crooks, liars, scumbags and frauds.

We denounce the international economic institutions to be the instigators of this whole fraud scheme, and we think they should ALL go to jail."

Interesting opinion from The Guatemala News...

ARE WE STILL IN KINDERGARTEN?

I shouldn't demean the sharp little brains of genuine kindergarteners by comparing them to current US economic advisors, but I just got my in-all-seriousness Economic Stimulus check, sort of money-colored, with the Statue of Liberty on it, though it was only for $300 because being an expat with a good accountant I have paid no US taxes since 1972, and $300 is all that 36 years of zero taxes deserves. Great return on investment, though!

And not to bite the hand that stimulates me, but it strikes me somewhere in preschool that the US government, which I'd mistakenly thought had an economic department filled to the rafters with top-level financial advisers who knew way more than any of my economics professors ever did - in the face of the biggest national debt in history, negative personal savings, financial entities swooning and collapsing right and left, a trillion-dollar war going on, personal debt surpassing Everest, a sky-high Sword of Derivatives hanging over the world, housing foreclosures up the cliche ("When the Treasury/Fed team moved to rescue Bear Stearns and, more recently, Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac, the $5 trillion-plus burden of risk was neatly transferred to the American citizen."), multiple industrial giants on the brink of bankruptcy, pensions and health plans in respective black holes - sends a 300 dollar check (payable in fiat money, no less) to stimulate a guy on a mountain on the other side of the world! It's somewhat less stimulating to me than it is to a guy on a mountain back in the US, since by the time I get it cashed via the labyrinthine Japanese banking system, the dollar could well be toast and I'll wind up getting stimulated by maybe half a tank of gas, whereas maybe the guy on the other mountain can still get a case of world-class beer.

As hinted at in the aforegoing, I find it it a very unpalatable reality to swallow regarding my native country-- that a select group of America's best minds (excluding those currently creating the vacuum at the very top) actually got together, brainstormed and concluded that the best thing to do right now, to begin pulling the US economy out of its 10-year, multitrillion dollar hole (the money to pay for which will of course come out of the common taxpayers' wallet) is to send everybody some pocket change! They think they're stimulating the economy by giving people back a smidgeon of THEIR OWN MONEY! Your money, in my case. Nice of you; thanks.

There's always hope, though; maybe the next administration can get the whole class into the first grade...

THE NIXON PHONE BOOK

I just received my annual Nixon Phone Book, the insidiously helpful 2006-1040, Forms and Instructions for Overseas Filers (it's not something I admit to just anyone, but the fact is, I'm... I'm... an Overseas Filer), its officious thickness crammed with goodies like A Message from the Commissioner, Mark W. Everson: "Paying taxes is a pain in more than one place unifying experience … each year two hundred million people waste humungous amounts of time and resources carry out this vital obligation by filing their return.”

It's nice of the Commissioner to spew niceties upon us from the other side of the world, but the fact is that I and many thousands of other US citizens in Japan will now have to spend big chunks of time - time we could have spent on actual living - getting all the forms together, then figuring out and filling out this monster, only to end up paying no taxes because we didn't earn a penny in the US. Is that Nixonian or what?

To say nothing of the billions of man/woman hours expended by those 200 million taxpayers in America, in terms of designing, creating, printing, mailing and processing the Nixon Phone Book, for zero return, the cost to the US taxpayer must be quite a bundle, but Mark never mentions anything about all that.

Then the "I am not a crook" Phone Book sets me pondering pointlessly whether as an expat I can maybe (as the cover so governmentally invites me to do) snag the credit for Federal Telephone Excise tax ("See the instructions for line 71 on page 60."), whether I should use the Alternative Minimum Tax Exemption Amount (can I pay less than zero?) and similar non-zen ponderings...

Anyway, it was in that taxing state of mind that I came across Your Real Tax Rate, an interesting article about what the already burdened US taxpayer actually pays:

"Politicians rarely talk about what real people experience: the true maze of taxes and government benefits. If someone put them all together, we could see what our actual tax burden was. We could see who pays at the highest or lowest rates. Discussions of tax policy wouldn't be a waste of time.

"Well, two researchers did it...

"As a consequence, a 30-year-old couple earning only $20,000 a year has a marginal tax rate of 42.5%, while a 45-year-old couple earning $500,000 pays at 43.2%.”

Sounds fair.

As in that general mood of fairness I slog along through this stack of forms I can't help but contrast it with the tax system in Japan, where no company employee ever fills out a tax form. I've worked full-time here for 20 years and part-time for 7 years, and have never filled out a Japanese tax form; the company accountants take care of it. So for me I guess it all balances out. But I wonder if American voters will elect any politicians at all in 2008.

HE ACTUALLY SAID THAT, THE QUESTIONABLY RICH 'PRESIDENT' OF THE UNITED STATES ACTUALLY SAID THAT!!

"Bush also said high taxes on the rich are a failed strategy because 'the really rich people figure out how to dodge taxes anyway.'"

Paid any taxes lately?