The Dark Side of Credit Rehabilitation

Dutch and I recently got a "final notice" from the IRS for a $500 bill. We were both shocked. As we read the reams of documentation they sent, a few things came to light.

1). We made an extra $4K we had no idea about. Normally this would be great news. The sad thing was we didn't remember either getting it or spending it. Or even earning it. We are scrupulous about declaring our income. We save every W-2, and we carefully send them in. Plus we are too retarded to figure out how to make money under the table. I sometimes wish we weren't such law-abiding citizens, especially when we get treated like tax evaders. If only!

2). After sending in many correct "address change" forms, the IRS still doesn't know where we live. Hence the "final notice" was sent certified mail, the only mail smart enough to overcome their postal ineptitude.

3). After a lot of digging (I couldn't look at it anymore-- I had hit my paperwork saturation point hours earlier after trying to make sense of my official lay-off papers) Dutch divined that the total corresponded eerily with an amount we were forgiven for a defaulted credit card we had paid off in return for having the principle reduced. At the time we thought it was a great thing to get those creditors off our backs, to clear that account. Paying off debts is good-- so we thought. No where in our wildest dreams did it occur to us that that money was income. We never saw it, or even spent it. The vast majority of it was bank fees, collection fees, and exhorbitant credit card interest. Besides, it wasn't free. We paid thousands of dollars for the privilege.

Our minds were boggled. Did we have to pay taxes on our Costco refund check from AMEX? What about coupons and two-for-one deals-- is that income, too? What about sales? What about my mom's free babysitting? What about other debts we pay off early-- is that taxable savings, too? Every day I am healthy and I don't go to the hospital, I am saving money (and so is my insurance), too. We are "cheating" the IRS from hundreds of untapped resources.

Why doesn't the IRS go after GM, or drug traffickers, or prostitution rings? I hear on the radio that GM simply doesn't pay taxes-- they have an army of lobbyists and legislators busily creating tax loop holes especially for them. The oil industry and Hollywood still don't pay taxes. Our tax system is horribly unfair. Clearly working as a teacher does not pay, and neither does being honest.

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Post Script

I can quit my whining. It turns out we don't have to pay it because we were insolvent at the time (our debts out-value our assets). I have never been so grateful for being broke. Thanks Papa D.

And thank you MLB, for the empowering comment!

Not So Fast

I have luddite guilt. As much as I want to be normal, jump on the bandwagon and ra ra with the rest of the people (who really only exist in my mind anyways) I simply can't. I wish I could love digital cameras. Like cell phones, they'd presumably release my inner brilliant creativity and allow me to actualize my vision or some such nonsense.

Case in point.

This entry originally was going to be about my bento box fixation. I was going to yammer on about some triviality related to the joy of packing my lunches with order and starch and unwrapping them at the noon hour, which inevitably finds me in a slightly hostile environment. How lovely it is to unwrap something nice-looking and eat it before resuming my hopeless tasks.

I was just making my bentos for tomorrow and Tuesday and they looked so damn cute on the cutting board (like two little matching piggies). Dutch recently gave me his digital camera so I had no excuse not to capture the moment and [gasp] blog about it immediately (instead of waiting the obligatory three months). I snapped some fine still-lives, toddled up my stairs to the nearest USB port and plugged it in. Instead of my darling bentos staring at me from the screen, I found, instead, sun drenched scenes from Dutch's last Brazil adventure (I truly hope those women in bikinis were his cousins). I scrolled and scrolled (like an angry Rabbi) and I found no satisfaction whatsoever. In my defense, I have used digital cameras many times before and have been able to retrieve, etc, the images. Then I tried to reload them and all I succeeded in doing was getting an error messages saying "initialize the memory card."

I"ll try again someday. Until then, I have the rusty Nikon and dorky rolls of film that can be lost in the mail.

more postcards

I can't say who this is going to, it might spoil the fun.



This arrived in my mail box from one of the Swap-botters. Oh how happy this makes me. The writer put a cool quote from John Muir on the back. It had a San Fran postal cancellation, so it makes me think that she must live somewhere in the Mighty Bay Area.

Vindicating American Tree Knowledge

I was recently at a bar with a Russian (the bar was called the Mallard, but that is beside the point) and he was complaining about how "Americans don't know the names of trees." I of course disagreed, but then, driving down the sycamore-lined mean streets of Bear Town, it occurred to me that I wasn't 100% sure those were sycamores. Could he possibly be right? I wondered. We (as a nation) have Arbor Day, fer cryin' out loud, and Johnny Appleseed, Teddy Roosevelt, John Muir, professional tree-sitters and Thoreau. This anonymous (local) woman who just sent this postcard to me, clearly loves trees and John Muir, and maybe she can't name those trees, but she appreciates them. We haven't quite gotten to the point of having a Tree Musuem (perish the thought), but, here in Flip, we have a grove where each blessed tree has a bronze plaque and a number. My mother knew the number of scrub oaks at our old northern Cal property. The Mountain People certainly know their native trees.

He could be right, there could be droves of tree-ignorant Americans out there, but I don't know any.

I only know a narrow sample of Americans, and I haven't quized any foreigners lately about their arboreal knowledge, so please help me out, oh sapient readers, what thinkest thou?