Opinion Piece By Samuel Strait – April 22, 2019 I don't often think that adults go out of their way to sound stupid, particularly when it is in black and white and printed in the local newspaper with your very own name attached to it. It does, it seems, happen, and often with in our local print newspaper, the Triplicate. I'm not certain you can pass it off as "I was asleep in class in high school when the teacher…..", or "my parents never said anything about it when I got my first check". It would be nice if it was that public education has gone so far into touchy feely education that they no longer even educate students about some of the most basic issues surrounding your first job. What ever the case, it was a recent letter to the editor in the Triplicate that got my attention, and I will leave it to my readers to figure out which letter. I think I must have been about sixteen when I got my first summer job from the Bureau of Reclamation, along with the job came a pay check and its accompanying stub listing all of the deductions taken from said pay check to satisfy the various governments that wanted a piece of my earnings. There was not for me at least any sort of mystery as to what all the numbers meant. In the spring of the following year, I filed my first IRS 1040 and because I only had worked for three months during the summer, I found that I didn't owe the federal government any income tax and received all of MY MONEY back in the form of a refund. This was money taken from my earnings over the course of my employment to be used to settle my tax bill. As the government tends to do when it comes to withholding from a pay check, the amount tends to be generous, and most people having one job end up with a refund. That process has almost become institutionalized for many to the point that they do not realize the government has had your money for most of a year to do with as they like, then return the excess with holding after you have filed with the IRS with no thought of paying interest on that refund. I think now it is time to get to the embarrassing part. A Letter to the Editor of the Triplicate wrote to complain about the fact that her expected refund for calendar year 2018 was less than 2017 and that she had paid more in income tax as well. Since she claimed to be retired and living on Social Security and a pension, I don't suppose it occurred to her that the amount of Social Security and her pension per month increased from 2017 to what she received in 2018. Just a tip, I don't think the increased amount she received from her pension was because she got a raise. That extra money that you got each month in your pay check or pension was there because the federal government thought you might wish to keep more of your pay check or pension rather than having it used interest free by the federal government for all of 2018. Of course the fact that you have more money during the calendar year does not mean that you don't have to pay more income tax and that your refund just might reflect the fact that your withholding was less. Kind of simple when you are not out to bash the current president. As far as mortgage interest relief goes, that is just part of living in California. When the rest of the Country has been picking up the slack for California due to the way it handles mortgage interest, it is not very surprising that at some point those that pick up the slack start to notice. Fortunately for Californians having the feds allow for tax breaks for people that have large mortgages over the years, allows the California State government to keep its tax rates down in order to avoid complete rebellion a la Proposition 13. It is just at this point that California will start having to pay for that mortgage relief like almost every other state in the country and thanks to the way the Democrats in the State House do business, it is likely they will want more from your pension or pay check in the near future. After all, can't have anyone benefiting from having more money to spend during the year, especially in the Golden State. Buckle your tax seat belts for more of what government in the State of California has to offer. Finally, it seems that when people have to deal with the reality of paying taxes, no matter how much or little you have to pay, someone else who is doing better than you are "isn't paying enough!" Or better yet those nasty corporations aren't paying their fair share. That leads into a whole other story……. Pure envy, not a pleasant attribute for someone to cling