Episode Seventeen: The Single-Status Stick-up

God bless the good ol’ American family.

The rest of us single people, though…well, we’re doomed.

Welp, it’s everyone favorite time of year, tax time. Every year, accounts praise their degrees, and thank their lucky Congressman that we have to go though this document-filled ritual. It’s that time of year where you acutally have to contact that job you quit last year for not paying you enough, because they owe you one last piece of paper: the dreaded W-2s. It’s that time for 1040s, 1098-Es, 1085s, and every other four-digit tax return sheet in between.

So why do us single people hate this time of year so much? Simple: most of us feel – and are probably right – that we get the shortest end of the refund stick. You see, grown, unmarried adults with no kids in America simply tells the government that you’re OK and you don’t need relief, being as though you’re only supporting yourself. Of course, we all know this is a lie, especially if most of us are living on a paycheck-to-paycheck type of lifestyle.

I guess my riff with this system is for all the taxes that snatched up out my check every other Friday, I sure see very little back when the I.R.S. finds out just how little I took home last year before they fleeced me of hard-earned dollars. And depending on how much you take home, you’ll be extremely lucky to take home anything; you may just actually owe something. It’s almost like being penalized for not having kids, which seems ass-backwards to me. I mean, for all the issues with overpopulation, teen pregnancy, single-parent households, wouldn’t it be nice to be rewarded for actually having control over your seed?

Look, not to disrespect any parents – be they single or married – because we all know that raising a child is a supremely taxing process at times, and parents deserve some help from the goverment when times are hard, it’s just that I would like to work for one year without that feeling that I’d be getting girked again when the tax man cometh. Besides, I feel like I have a dependent already: I mean, I’m sure all those taxes taken out of my check helped give someone an unemployment check or provided a meal at the local soup kitchen.

So why should I and others like me be left out of the “giving”? I mean, we all have the same bills year after year (that actually seem to do nothing but rise), yet jobs aren’t giving raises to match them annually, leaving our wallets just a little bit lighter.  I’m not saying hand out a “single dependent” bonus, I’m just saying give a bigger cut either in the percentage of our checks that go to the federal goverment though FICA, SSI, etc., or set a lower number on that tax brackets so we can get refunds that will accommdate our earning power as well.

*Sighs* Maybe I should just starting taking in people, so I can claim them or something. Then again, Uncle Sam would probably try to swipe that money from me, too.

2/6/2010