I Heart Uncle Sam

Lisa and I went to get our taxes done today. What a fantastic morning! As students we made out like champs. All of the income from my internship and Lisa's research work was deducted so we got everything back. Not bad for two slightly hungover hours with Paula (our tax advisor at the H&R Block in Wilmette, we highly recommend her).

There were a couple of things I found particularly interesting:

1. Apparently long distance telephone companies have been charging a tax that they shouldn't have been. The IRS decided that the best way to refund the money was to give long distance telephone users a $30-$60 tax credit on this year's return (so we don't have to dig through our old phone bills to see how much we actually paid, thoughtful yeah?). It may not a be a lot of money, but it did pay for the port I just ordered. More info.
2. So what's the deal with New York City taxes? It's got the highest tax burden of any major city in the US by far (it can get up to 3 1/2 percent). I wasn't aware of this when I worked there this summer although I really should have been. In any case, my immediate reaction was "man this is downright obnoxius," so I did a little digging and found a nice article describing the reasons for it (NY Times). More services, aging infrastructure, heavily unionized. Makes sense. I can't wait to move there this fall.