African-American Friday
I finished my work in-county on Wednesday and I was packing stuff away when I had a bit of a revelation. Mind you it's just from the seat of my pants without any real basis. Yet?
A friend of mine works for a health insurance company. "Coding stuff" is all I know about the job. The health insurance company has a profit-sharing program where employees receive an amount based upon the success of the company through the year. Since it's health insurance my friend received $10,000 (or something close to that), but they were taxed out the wazoo to make it essentially meaningless.
Many American corporations pay no taxes and how they avoid shelling out is interesting to say the least. Interesting still is this old chestnut about how Warren Buffett pays less in taxes than his secretary.
My small epiphany while packing up my title searching kit and the day's work? My friend was shafted by the government in taxes because that's how the major health insurance company pays taxes, by making their employees pay them. I'm not talking payroll tax nor unemployment insurance nor any of the other ways the government nickels and dimes its citizens, but by giving out large bonuses which are halved (or more) which helps cover the company's books come tax season.
The bad analogy I gave to my friend in Bloomfield is the supermarket scam of donating to hungry, crippled kids with cancer during checkout. The supermarket writes off the donation, very little of the money reaches the charity. Depending on the charity, even less money goes to those who need the money. In this case the people who need the money, the employee, receive a pittance despite a windfall. A portion of that goes to the government as taxes. The remainder of this dragon's horde gets laundered and moved around to be considered ersatz profit for the corporation.
Does this hold water? I have no idea. Does it bear investigating? Yup.
If anything, the tax system needs to be overhauled and kept progressive in its use rather than simply by name.
a look inside
After cleaning my room on Thanksgiving Eve, I took two pictures to supplement the diagram I posted a while ago.
a dream about mail
On November 3rd, I sent off two postcards to Australia and South Korea. Typically a letter to South Korea takes three weeks to a month to arrive. Australia? No clue. So basically they're racing against each other to see which arrives first.
Last night I dreamt that my friend in South Korea received my postcard. In the dream he posted photos of it on Twitter to let me know. A little while later I was stirred from slumber when my phone went off. Drowsily I thought to myself, "Huh, that'd be neat if he was texting me that my postcard did arrive" but I didn't check Telegram until morning. Rather he was asking about Thanksgiving and how many days it lasts. I'm a little disappointed but if Eric Wargo's theory of precognition holds water, most likely the postcard will arrive soon.
Speaking of which I need to buy Christmas cards and send them out, internationally, so they arrive in a timely fashion. Last year my Christmas card to South Korea arrived sometime in January.
