Rendering Unto Seizer

Now that the income-tax exchange is over, with my money in the grab bag, some thoughts come to mind.

To begin with, where do they get the expression “estimated tax”? It’s more than estimated; it has to be paid--or else.

You pay your quarterly, euphemistically “estimated tax,” and then April 15 you forget there have been four quarterlies and your current payment is simply a supplement to the quarters, a fifth giveaway.

The whole bundle gently moves from you to “them,” Uncle Sam being the them, and if you don’t pay, the computer gets after you with dire results.

I remember my first payment to the feds, $1.86, away back when I was young. Who would ever think that that modest contribution would escalate thousands of times.

It’s like getting the foot in the door. Once a tax gets a title, there is no end to how that title can incrementize.

There was the time when I prepared my tax in short shrift. Then there was the time when it took all day, and I could still have time to help others. Then it took me two days, and I surrendered to an accountant.

Today it is quite a bundle of chaff, some 40%, federal and state, and we can’t wait for the ax, I mean tax, to fall, increasing our percentages and dependency on the great Satan, the great bureaucracy in Washington, D.C., which we support come hell or high water.

When the taxes reach 100%, as in the Soviet Union, Big Brother will then take over, will write the laws, interpret them, put us all on the dole.

JEROME GREENBLATT

Laguna Hills