Just why shouldn’t Trump finances be scrootin’ed the way IRS does for us?

TRUMP: On tax issue, nunya bizness is his 'tude

Monday was Tax Day, and some 50 million U.S. taxpayers (about one-sixth of the nation) waited until the deadline before filing their returns that acknowledge just how much they need to “pay up” to the guv’mint!

Yes, I must confess, I was amongst them. I made my trek to the post office Monday morning to ensure my envelopes to the Internal Revenue Service and Illinois Department of Revenue got the necessary postmarks confirming I met the April 15 deadline.

NOW BECAUSE I’M working the freelance routine, I’m constantly checking my mailbox for checks – none of which have any money withheld for taxes.

Meaning that for me, this is the time of year I have to acknowledge just how big my share of financial support for the state and federal governments during the past year was. And above all else, I have to PAY UP!

My share isn’t significant. Our nation certainly isn’t going to pay off its debts based off what I provide them.

Although it’s like the thoughts of one-time Sen. Everett McKinley Dirksen, who once said, “a billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking about real money.”

WHICH IS A thought we should keep in mind when our political people quibble over whether President Donald Trump ought to publicly disclose his own income tax returns.

DIRKSEN: A million here, a million there … 

Unlike most contemporary politicos, Trump has steadfastly refused to make his returns public – taking an attitude that’s something along the lines of “none of your business!”

Although I suspect that Trump’s real reason for so stubbornly refusing to let us see his returns – when putting together my own return this year, I couldn’t help but note the many potential tax write-offs that are available to certain people.

The write-offs that make it possible for them to significantly reduce the amount of their overall income that gets taxed. With some people being able to write off so much that they essentially wind up owing the government nothing.

IT WOULDN’T SHOCK me to learn that the roughly one-quarter I owed in taxes this year of the just under $16,000 I earned as a freelance writer during 2018 would be a larger share than what Trump has paid out.

DALEY: Scrootin'ed?

I’m also sure that the average U.S. taxpayer has an income situation closer to mine than to anything resembling the Trumpster. Which means keeping this issue low-key is more about Trump trying to keep the public from realizing how different he is from they are.

We hear talk from Trump about how his business finances are under audit and he doesn’t want to interfere with any IRS review being done. I think it’s more about him being arrogant enough to think it’s none of our business.

Because if it were our business, we’d have the kind of finances that would make us eligible for all kinds of tax write-offs. Since we don’t, he probably thinks we’re just financial chumps – but certainly doesn’t want it publicly known that he truly regards us as peons.

IT WILL BE interesting to see if House Ways and Means chairman Richard Neal, D-Mass., has any luck in swaying the IRS in releasing the past six years worth of Trump’s returns. Or will the IRS conclude that this is merely a Democratic effort at playing partisan politics against the president.

NEAL: Will he get Trump taxes?

We’ll have to see just how much scrutiny our officials want to have done on our president.

Which actually reminds me of the 2001 moment when then-Mayor Richard M. Daley spoke of the concept, saying, “What else do you want? Do you want to take my shorts? Give me a break. How much scrutiny do you want to have? Go scrutinize yourself. I get scrootin’ed every day.”

Perhaps what we really need is for Trump to be scrootin’ed by the masses to make this issue go away. Just like the rest of us are submitting our own finances to by the IRS.

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A political statement? Or just someone who has no business with a firearm?

Is Nahshon Shelton now the idol of all the anti-tax and firearms fanatics who exist in our society?

SHELTON: In jail over 22 cents?

I’d hope not. Although considering how rigid they are to their causes without regard to how their rhetoric actually fits in to our daily lives, you never know.

FOR THE RECORD, Shelton is a Garfield Park neighborhood resident who is going to be spending the next few months/years living without the option of bond at the Cook County Jail – depending on how long it takes Cook County state’s attorney’s office to prosecute his criminal case.

He got arrested on Saturday when he pulled a blue-steel Intratec .22-caliber automatic weapon out of a Gucci bag he was carrying. The Chicago Sun-Times reported Monday that Shelton threatened to kill everyone in the store.

What was it that ticked Shelton off?

It seems he was at a store on Madison Street near Pulaski Road, and objected to the fact that the store wanted to charge him more than the $1.79 list price for a two-liter bottle of Pepsi cola.

TWENTY TWO CENTS more, to be exact. Because that’s how much all the assorted taxes came to on that bottle of pop.

“This is my neighborhood. I’m tax-exempt,” is what he supposedly told the police when they questioned him about the incident.

I’m not trying to make light of a criminal act, or the alleged behavior of Shelton, a 36-year-old with a prior criminal record (which means he never would have got a concealed carry permit for his power-packed Gucci satchel).

But in reading about his incident, I wonder how many of those anti-tax types (particularly the ones who have a penchant for firearms of all types) wish they could do something exactly like what Shelton did?



They had a busy weekend

I THINK AN incident like this puts the nonsensical nature of their views into a proper perspective. Just nuts, rather than any kind of revolutionary thought process that would benefit our society.

You can complain all you want about excess taxes – and being appalled that Gov. Pat Quinn is in a position this spring where he’s calling for an extension of an increase on the income tax while also being asked to sign into law a measure that could raise local property taxes (in Chicago-proper, at least) as well!

But the idea is that governments do have some services they must perform, and there needs to be a source of funding to cover the ever-increasing costs of things (unless you want to complain and rant about how cheap – I remember when newspapers were 20 cents, and not the current $1-1.50 per day – things used to be.

A part of me thinks of all these anti-tax types as being as ridiculous as what Shelton is alleged to have done.

WE CAN ONLY be thankful that police happened to be in the area of the store at the time of the incident. Because Shelton, according to police, was carrying a weapon with a round of ammunition in the chamber, eight more rounds in the magazine, and five rounds in yet another magazine.

He could easily have become the lede story of what was a particularly violent weekend – there were 36 people shot in Chicago during one 36-hour time period from Saturday into early Sunday. Four of those people did die, according to the Chicago Tribune.

Pay up!!!

And the over-swamped Police Department had to cope with all of this violence. Just think how much worse things would be if the anti-tax types (some of whom are incredibly unbending in their view on the issue) were to ever get their way and we got the kind of police department they would want us to be able to afford?

Just a thought to keep in mind for those of you ranting and raging about Tax Day and the size of the checks you had to write out to be in compliance with the governments on your share of the tax bill.

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Tax Day creeping up on all of us

I have a lazy streak within me. Never put off in my personal life until tomorrow what I can do next week!

Ordeal will end here on Monday

This weekend, I’m going to pay for it.

FOR TAX DAY is coming up on all of us Monday. That is when we have to have our income tax returns to the federal and state governments at least in the mail.

And if we’re being completely honest here, I haven’t even thought about it yet. Which means this is the weekend I’m going to have to make some time to sit down and figure out just how much I owe the governments of the national and state entities in which I reside.

I doubt I will be one of those people who will be desperately trying to figure out some tax dodge Monday night, then rushing to find a post office that will be open until Midnight so I can get that all-desired postmark that confirms I “filed” my returns on time.

But it means I probably will not be a pleasant person to be around this weekend. So I’m warning those of you who have any personal contact with me to “Leave Me Alone!!!!” It’s for your own good.

ACTUALLY, MY RETURNS won’t be complex. They’ll just be painful.

I don’t have any investments or real tax loopholes that complicate the situation. I just have income – which means calculating the amount of money owed and paying up.

For one of the drawbacks to being a self-employed freelance writer is that no one is withholding income on my behalf to pay the tax collector. I’m responsible for making those payments myself.

There won’t be a refund, because for me, April 15 is all about accounting my income and reconciling my debt. I owe, and I will have to pay up.

AND NO, I don’t gain any sympathy for those ideologues who want to rant and rage about the evils of taxation and how government is wasting “their” money. I support the concept that government works on our behalf, and that there is something of an obligation to help support it financially.

So perhaps I should view this time of year as another moment of civic duty – similar to how I make a point of casting ballots on Election Day. It gives me my right to complain about what is going wrong.

But I’m not that high-minded. What I’m really going to feel is the pain of having to make payments to reconcile my accounts and ensure that the Internal Revenue Service does not take any special interest in my existence.

I’m going to be broke for awhile. So that might be another reason to “Leave Me Alone!!!” I will probably have a less-pleasant than usual personality for some time.

I HAVE TO confess, I stumbled across a long-ago friend whom I went to college to who was able to boast last month that he had finished his tax returns. A part of me was envious.

Then again, I’m also realistic enough to admit that I don’t have the energy to compute my finances because I know I’m going to feel that moment of depression when I have to confront just how much money I owe!

In fact, there’s really only one fact that brings me any solace these days. It reminds me of a time in my third year of college when I was two weeks away from Final Exams with four papers that needed to be written – and I had only barely started on one of them. What kept me from cracking up then was the constant reminder I gave myself that regardless of what happened (I wound up finishing all of them by deadline), it would all be over in two weeks. I’d be on break.

Tax Day is Monday. No matter how frazzled (and financially busted) I will wind up, it will all be over in two more days.

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