Water water everywhere and not a drop to drink

I remember riding with an acquaintance a long while back to play some roundball when someone tapped the back of his bumper.  The first words out of his mouth were, "Do you think we can get some money out of this?"  That's the last time I played basketball with that guy, but I've witnessed that behavior countless times in people since.  There should be a special place in hell for those "working the system."  These are people whose only sense of morality is "help me good, hurt me bad," and manage to rationalize their self-centered greed with all sorts of twisted justifications. 

While there's a million examples of this behavior, and one doesn't have to look too far to find it at tax time, I'm thinking about FEMA right now, as we've recently gone through some flooding in this area (the picture is of four nearby fields at which my son sometimes plays soccer and baseball).  We've all read about all those opportunistic scoundrels who took advantage of the New Orleans disaster to get tons of money undeservedly or spent it in improper ways, scamming the government or the well-intentioned for their own evil profit.  I even know someone who used FEMA money in California (of course) to pay for a boob job.  I don't think that P.T. Barnum actually said anything about suckers, but the quote, "There's a sucker born every minute, and two to take him," comes to mind in pondering all the people trying to take advantage of individuals and governments in times of crisis.  I guess it's the same reason that we have to lock our doors at night and when we're away, and even then it's not enough.

Death and Taxes

I'm certainly not the first to think of this, but I've sure thought this for a very long time: flat tax. Just think of all the bureaucracy, and the expenses associated with it, that would be saved if there was a flat tax. What would happen to all those accountants and lawyers? The accountants could go to collections, and the lawyers could go to the bottom of the sea. As for the flat tax, pick a number, say 10% (a random choice, but I like the relation to tithing), then allow no deductions of any type, not mortgages, not kids, not anything, and allow no exceptions, period. Take it right out of everyone's pay directly. If you want to make a consumption tax instead (national sales tax, for example), that works too.

It irritates me that so many people cheat on their taxes. Some a little, some a lot; I just don't know how many. Is it the majority? It's bad enough that I have to pay for half the free world's "entitlements" with my taxes, but I've recently come to wonder if by being honest I'm not only paying too much to make up for the cheating weasels, but am overpaying by not knowing the byzantine tax code sufficiently. (So go to a CPA? They need you to bring all your records, and getting all your records is the problem.) I just spent many hours trying to reconstruct the cost basis of mutual funds by locating dividends paid out over time years ago (and taxes paid on them) and reinvested. I'm pretty sure I haven't done this competently in the past (as brokers haven't kept computer records for as long as you might think), or at least have done so to my disadvantage, as locating these records is extremely difficult. Brokerages are keeping better records now, and the data bases that can compute cost bases given acquisition and disposal dates and amounts are pretty good but have limitations, yet I'm sure I have been underestimating the cost basis of these investments, and therefore overpaying on capital gains (or not realizing the capital losses) for a long time. And I'm sure there are many examples that, much like every mistake ever made by a retailer, never go in my favor. But you know what? It's only money, and frankly I don't need that much of it (which tends to work out nicely).