I’ve done something that I haven’t done for ten years and that is to file my income tax. I’ve never filed since I closed my last business and walked away from my debts as I never really made enough to pay taxes, except for one year. It’s a long story as to why I waited so long to file, but I’ve had the feeling for a few weeks now that I needed to clear up this unresolved issue of my back taxes so that I could move on.
Since 1980, I’ve always had my accountant do my business and personal taxes but when I no longer had a business or a job with steady money coming in, I felt what’s the point. I tried to do my taxes a few years ago and even went to the library to read up on tax law but was overwhelmed as there were two huge books with hundreds of pages in each, and that was just for basic personal taxes. It was way too complicated and I had no interest in learning all the codes, jargon, and of course the obfuscating legalese that is subject to bureaucratic interpretation.
I decided to hire a guy that was advertizing on Kijiji to them for me. I found it baffling in that while in most cases I was under the basic personal exemption limit, I was still paying taxes. So why do they even call it an exemption? Dah? I asked the accountant that question and he said that while it’s called an exemption, they also add allowances and tax benefits deemed as income, so that whatever you earn pushes you over the basic exemption and you have to pay taxes. Trouble is that low income people don’t earn enough to play the tax game of tax shelters and write off’s so they are stuck with the governments hand in their pocket.
Saysame (Says-a-me) 