Another day, another big-freaking-wad-of-dollars!

Another tax day has come and gone, and I find myself with a large, smoldering hole in my wallet yet again. I pay all of the normal Federal, state and local (city) taxes but, being self-employed, I also get dinged by the illustrious "self-employment tax".

Everyone pays FICA (Social Security). I've got no problem with that. Well... I do. But that is a whole other issue.

For anyone who works for someone else, their FICA bill gets split in half. You pay half and your employer pays half. For those of us who work for ourselves though, there is no employer to cover half the tab. Instead, we pay the entire thing (15.3% to be exact) ourselves. Nifty, huh? Just think about what you could do with another 7.65% of your annual income in your pocket, especially as a self-employed small business owner.

Man. I just can't wait until we get a Democrat in the oval office who will let those pesky "Bush Tax Cuts" expire! You know, the tax cuts he gave to "the rich"! Yeah! And we need to raise taxes some more so we can cover our new socialized medicine, finance the world via the "Global Poverty Act", fight global warming and expand our social services even more!

For those of you lefties who read that last paragraph and got all excited... It was SARCASM!

Since I'm kind of on the subject of the "Bush Tax Cuts", maybe someone can explain to me how they are considered tax cuts "for the wealthy". Let's break-down some of this tax data, shall we? Let's compare actual tax for a few different income ranges for both 1999 (Clinton) and 2008 (Bush).

• Single, making $30,000
  1999 Tax: $8,400
  2008 Tax: $4,500
  
• Single, making $50,000
  1999 Tax: $14,000
  2008 Tax: $12,500
  
• Single, making $75,000
  1999 Tax: $23,250
  2008 Tax: $18,750
  
• Married, making $60,000
  1999 Tax: $16,800
  2008 Tax: $9,000
  
• Married, making $75,000
  1999 Tax: $21,000
  2008 Tax: $18,750
  
• Married, making $125,000
  1999 Tax: $38,750
  2008 Tax: $31,250

A monkey could see that the Bush tax cuts were not just "for the wealthy", they were for everyone, at every income level. If you pay special attention, you'll also notice that the discounts get smaller as the incomes get bigger. Go figure. The "wealthy" actually get LESS of a break than the "poor" under Bush's plan. Huh.

Yeah. Those tax cuts are evil. We should do away with them ASAP! (More sarcasm!)