Taxes Are The Most Confusing Things In The World And Nobody Knows What They Are Doing

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I wrote this blog a few years ago and it’s resonating hard with me right now. Why? Because I have like 3 days to do my taxes and I don’t know where to start. I wish I could just Michael Scott it and be like “I DECLARE MY TAXES DONE!”. Honestly, why do we even have to do them? We need some sort of Theranos for taxes where a microchip just fills it all out for us. Makes a lot more sense than whatever “doing your taxes” even means. And the more I talk to people, the more people have no idea what it means. You just download TurboTax, fill in some numbers, and voila, your taxes are “done”? But you don’t even know if you did the right things to get the maximum amount back from the government, or to give as little as possible. If you talk to an accountant they talk about loopholes and this and that and all these tricks of the trade, it’s just all a mess. So if you’re in the same boat, don’t worry, you’re not alone, not even a little bit.

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I’ve been talking to friends about this recently, and everyone agrees: taxes are the weirdest, most confusing thing we are forced to undertake as adults. As kids, you always hear about these “taxes” things. You know you hate them, but have no idea why. And then one day as an adult, POOF!, you’re expected to just “do them”. No real instructions of how to do them, what even to do..just told to “do them” before April 15th. It’s like…uhhh, ok, let me go ahead and get on that. My good friend Danny Rouhier brought it up on his show today, and I could not be on the same page with him more if I tried: taxes are ridiculous, nobody knows what they are, how to do them, or where they come from. Nothing about them make sense, and it’s insane they don’t teach you about them in school.

From Kindergarten-graduating college, I can remember two teachers that tried to teach us real life shit. Two. They were both in high school, and the only two that went outside of the bullshit curriculum to try and teach us how credit cards work, what the stock market is, and maybe give us a little real life common sense. But even still, it wasn’t enough. Sure you need to take pre calc and learn FOIL and memorize all sorts of bullshit formulas…I mean seriously, y=mx+b, what the…what the fuck does that have to do with ANYTHING??? Meanwhile we have kids running around popping out 100 babies, everyone in thousands of dollars of credit card debt, and even though I’m sort of playing it up, people like me who don’t really grasp how to invest, how to do taxes, how to buy a house, etc. If I didn’t have good parents, which tons of people don’t, I’d be completely lost. I just opened an IRA a couple weeks ago with the help of my roommate who is a big finance guy/CPA financial planner guy. He told me almost nobody our age even knows this stuff is out there, and it’s pretty important to get into. But hey, as long as you can find the slope of a line, you’re all set for life, right? Good thing in college they made me take that Geology class as a requirement so I can retire happily with my knowledge of fossils.

And for real, what do dumb/poor/dumb and poor people do? I assume poors just don’t pay taxes, right? If every upper middle class person that I’ve talked to does not understand how to do taxes, what do the uneducated people that serve me my fast food do? Just go to jail every year? It’s mind blowing.

And yes, you can download Turbo Tax and file in like 10 minutes, but that’s not what we’re talking about here. We’re talking about the ins and outs and ups and downs of this stuff, none of it makes a lick of sense.

It’s no wonder in Armageddon they make all sorts of requests…one being to never pay taxes again. These dudes are about to risk their lives for the entire planet, for the salvation of man kind, and they have paying taxes on their brains. That’s how you know this shit is insane.

PS: I know there are people out there who do understand this type of stuff, and you guys are in the minority. So if you can, help your friends out. It’s the least you can do. Being an adult and doing adult things sucks enough as it is, we don’t have to go at it alone.