Yesterday I faced and survived my annual tax burden, a full ten days before I had to. There must be something wrong with I, Procrastinator. Anyway, I fired off my digits to our friends at the IRS and the MA DOR with a painless upload courtesy of both H and R Block. Before I stroked the AMT-enhanced $1.5G spot, the scoreboard read mostly red:

After I sent millions of microscopic little digital swimmers up into the mothership, I experimented to see how I might have lightened my load. A few keywords and clicks later, I found statistics indicating people in my general tax bracket give 3.65% of their Adjusted Gross Income to charity. I think that’s bullshit for most people. (Although I do believe someone “tithes” away enough of my money for the both of us…) Just to be charitable, I entered the 3.65% number into the program and discovered I would have received hundreds of dollars in a refund had I, um, been more charitable with myself…

An IRS and Economic Policy Institute study done after the 2000 tax season estimated $353B in taxes was owed, but not paid. That’s equal to about 15% of total taxes owed, or for those of you playing at home, a substantial piece of our mounting national debt.

Regardless of politics or position on how government spends our money, there are rules and many are breaking them, resulting in a weakening of our country.

Do you cheat on your taxes?