Friday, February 12, 2010

Value added service from the Fed?


I hate this time of year. It is nearly March and I have less than four weeks to figure out how I will pay taxes on money that I don't even touch, as I do each year, year after year, a big ball and chain bunch-o-bullshit. This in the wake of a audit that proved to be in my favor, that incidentally, cost 4 thousand bucks to defend. I stimulated my accounting firms economy. One up for the fed!

Have you ever caught yourself thinking... "should I even be saying stuff like this?"...."should I even share my opinion in an open forum for fear of some kind of retribution?"..."Will I be marked, monitored, secretly watched, put on some hotlist, some sort of secret concern over the fact that I think and say our government screws us out of our money?"..."is the fed, specifically the internal revenue service, off limits in regard "pulp" commentary?"..."Am I marked for blogging the truth?"

Who cares? Bottom line it is pretty damned hard to be an employer in the midst of an economic crisis, make corrections where needed and find momentum in whatever incremental positives come about. Small business cannot do much to change the fixed costs of compliance and, last I looked, the need to scale back has never been as important. The amount of administrative task to have somebody on the payroll still requires a task master, the use of energy and cost of an employee, an infrastructure, just to make sure we follow all of the rules. As far as I can see, there is no scaling back the aptitude required to adequately administrate and defend the feds demands on small business. This because the fed is so centered on increasing and maintaining revenue for itself that it continues to create programs and revenue seeking initiatives.

While I am on this...how about all the laws passed that require an even more proficient human resource department?- the rules for benefit and insurance admin, the legal documents that fill our manuals and our bookshelves? Don't forget about all the litigious stuff, loss prevention, sexual harassment, workers comp, OSHA!...(hey fed, better duly note that I am calling out OSHA while you are at it).

In most cases we have rules and regs to follow because our government passes laws to increase the institutions position in the system and gain control, which requires more taxes and more pressure on small business to pay for the institution, on and on and on and on.

I will stop short on the health care issue, but I will say: "Take a hike Obama", and you to Palin (or whomever else the pubs toss up on the pedestal for whatever pre or post election strategy), and anything left, right, center, blue, red....the current political backdrop...face it, there are no real custodians of our condition, just power seeking talking heads and us the businessmen and women.

The personification of our government, the talking heads, the suits and ties the conformity to the institution lives and thrives through the common media with coverage on motivational speeches for change and the fraternity of partisan and bi-partisan dwelling. It is all manipulation on behalf of those in power combined with a good ole boy concern for the welfare of political indulgence. Fact is, the fed has no conscience. It doesn't have a brain--no ability of its own other than how it is influenced by those securing an office in Washington. The fed is programed to want money, and the more the fed is empowered to collect, the more the power seeking figureheads seek to control.

Back on track...let's not forget employment taxes. We pay a fee to the government to have workers on our payroll. This also goes to the government, which has a big building somewhere with a bunch of people in it who deal with doling out unemployment benefits and policies on discrimination, EEOC stuff (the EEOC, Fed?...are you getting this).

Who invented this system and how did we approve it? How did we approve the fleecing of our entrepreneurial system? We pay the government the luxury of having to pay somebody to do the job that, if there are profits, the government takes up to 30%. Does the fed really provide the value that it costs us? Bottom line, that is the question. Somebody tell me that the government is not the problem.

Lets say they want to roll around and check up on ya, value added, make sure you are doing fine with all of it, double check a few things. Lets pull the 75 boxes of stuff out of storage and dig through it for a year. Don't do it yourself, hire somebody, a top gun at 200 bucks an hour. Let the top gun dig around, because they, by the way, are former feds themselves. They got training and stuff through the system and now exploit the system. They know where to look. They know how to deal with it. While they can be considered entrepreneurs, they are merely nothing more than beurocratic bi-product capitalists.

There are two parties in our political system as far as I am concerned: Business and Government. Decide which you support and make your vote by disregarding the media (politicians) who are the power and who manipulate self fulfilling causes. It is all a dog and pony to control revenues and maintain power.

I really wonder when this stuff will change? Likely when I find myself old and decrepit, coaching a young enigmatic group of interns while standing on a rock pontificating to the tribe of castaways from a system that failed so badly that mans only mission is to find food and defend our basic survival. Does anyone really see this thing working out any other way? Did you get that Mr. fed?

I won't give up. Nope, because I am at my best when things are the worst. Even though the fed makes me feel like a criminal half the time, I will fight the good fight. I can assure you that, should the house come crumbling down, I will make it my mission to improve our condition with the resources that I have.

Now where is my friggin harmonica?

1 comment:

Unknown said...

thumbs up on this