In other words, I did pretty well in 2010 so I had to pay extra money to the government for doing so well. To put it simply, free tax filing sounds good right about now. In total, I paid $3,564 to the Internal Revenue Service and another $374 to the great State of New Jersey.

"You can pay me now or you will pay me later." - Irwin R. Schyster

Oh, you might remember that I used a picture of former WWE wrestler Irwin R. Schyster in last year’s post. Well, I thought that the picture worked pretty well and was entertaining, so considering that I just uploaded a post that talked about WWE bringing WrestleMania to New Jersey, I figured that it would be great to bring back Mr. Schyster for this year’s tax news. And speaking of this year’s tax news…

I owe both the Internal Revenue Service and the State of New Jersey taxes again for 2011.

You can go back and read last year’s entry to find out all of the different places where I draw income from (including advertising revenues related to this blog). You can also go back and read last year’s entry to find out some of the different side jobs that I perform each year (adjunct teaching, for example). However, I want to reiterate a point that I made last year: generally speaking, I want to pay these taxes.

There are a lot of people who spend a lot of time trying to find ways to not pay the government according to the tax laws on the books. Unless you’ve got big-time scratch (and I do not), then it makes no sense to go out of your way to hide income or gains from the government. They’ll find out and they’ll nail you for it – so pay your damn taxes. The reason why I’m generally okay with paying these extra taxes is because I made a good amount of money last year.

I mean it’s simple enough, right? You make more money than you pay taxes on so you have to pay taxes on that excess income. Generally speaking, what’s the problem with that? Sure, we can get into a discussion about whether or not I should be taxed at the rate that I’m currently taxed at (I would suggest that I should be taxed at a lower rate). And yes, we can get into a discussion about whether the government uses my tax dollars according to my will or in a manner that I find efficient (the answer is “no” for both of those items), but that’s not the point of this entry. The point is that you should all want to pay more in taxes because if you have to pay more in taxes, then you must have earned more in income during the previous year. Let me repeat that:

The more taxes you pay, the more money you earned.

Keywords: “more,” “money,” and “earned.”

While I think that it sucks and I might be annoyed that I have to send a check to the Internal Revenue Service for some $3,200+ and to the State of New Jersey for some $450+, I’m glad that I worked hard enough and earned enough money to increase my tax liability. Although I do have a bone to pick with the IRS over one aspect of my taxes (the student loan interest deduction), but I’ll get to that in an entry to be posted in the next few days). Also, this year I was better prepared for a higher tax liability because of being so shocked that I owed money last year. So I’m prepared to pay the government this year with very little impact on my regular cash flow.

And that’s a good thing… because nobody wants to open their door and find Irwin R. Schyster waiting on their doorstep looking for a check. No thanks!

For me, though, I like this time of the year because I get to prepare my course that I teach at the local college. Since it is an “American National Government” course, I always have new information to put into my PowerPoints and new documents to make copies of for handouts. And, given the age group of the students that I’m teaching, I always get a lively discussion no matter what the topic. New topics for extended discussion this semester will include healthcare and paternalistic governments versus those governments that take a more hands-off approach.

I also enjoy getting a reading from the students on where they fall along the political spectrum. The reason why I enjoy this is because most of them consider themselves to be liberal, but once we start talking about an issue they advocate for traditionally conservative positions – a clear example that many of our young minds today are focused on doing what everyone else is doing…or what the loudest voice is doing. From the last couple of years teaching this course, I’ve discovered that most of the vocal students lean left, but that the best written papers are from those who lean right. Pretty odd occurrence, I think.

This semester I’ll also be teaching an online course for one of the oldest online colleges in the nation – Thomas Edison State College. TESC pioneered the idea of having older folks receive their Bachelor’s Degree via submitting a portfolio of their professional experience and receiving credit for it instead of actually having to go to class. Plus, they were the first online-only college (and they’re highly regarded, too).

The class that I’m teaching at TESC is an undergraduate course in nonprofit leadership. I’m looking forward to that one since it ties in directly with my own academic research as well as my day job. Should be a lot of fun coming up in the next few weeks!