We just talked with our accountant and he said that we are going to have to shell out quite the check to the Federal and State governments. This is mainly due to the sale of our rental house last May. While we still came out ahead, it is REALLY expensive to sell a house especially if it is not your primary residence. Ultimately where we thought we had a nice profit margin from the sale, we are only walking away with about 40% of that. Sixty cents of every dollar we made went to either tax, fixing it up for the FHA requirements or the realtors and closing costs! That is insane!

We were bracing for this tax bill ever since we sold it, but it still hurts when the time comes. I can see why the government does tax withholding on labor income because even though we paid way more than this amount throughout the whole year in automatic withdrawals (from our employment), it hurts a lot more to just write the big check all at once.

The thing about taxes is that it pays for many good and important things in society, but your contribution just feels like one of many and the roads and schools and things would still be there if you weren’t there (or hadn’t sold a house). Unlike a direct purchase where you get to use it right away and see its direct effects, taxes are much more ephemeral.

As it might be fun to get a little card in the mail like those programs in Africa where you feed a child and they send a note from a full-bellied child thanking you for your donation, it would be nice to get a thank you card that says “so and so street was built due to your generous tax contributions” or “this and that fire station” or “some war was paid for because of you” (well maybe not that one so much). But you get the idea.

Oh well, it’s a part of society and as they say there is nothing certain about life except death and taxes. In the mean time, I am dropping the Rincon progress vine down just a bit to adjust for this big bill. :-p We’ll make it up, we always do, it just hurts for a while. And we can’t lose the perspective that we still made money on the whole thing. Just not nearly as much as we thought.