the only sure things

I just finished D's taxes. He works part-time at a little convenience store around the corner. He made a little over 4K this year. Pretty good spending money for a teenager. He tends to buy his own cloths, hates taking money for gas (even though he commutes to campus 5 days a week), and doesn't share his old man's sense of frugality (read: cheapskatedness). Upon completing his tax forms, I was pleasantly surprised to find that he'd get a couple extra bucks back from the fed. And I honestly wasn't surprised to discover, upon finishing his NYS taxes, that the titanic sloth that is the New York State government will be receiving $72.83 from D (actually from H and me, because there's no way I'm going to let him pay for Bruno's, Silver's, and Spitzer's next junket to Barbados).

When people in New York bitch about taxes, I tend to listen on with a sort of, "yeah but..." attitude. I grew up in New Jersey. Taxes in Jersey make NYS taxes seem almost reasonable. What gets me pissed about NYS taxes is the near ridiculous model they apply to personal income taxation. I'm not even going to pretend to sound like I know what I'm talking about here. But I just have to wonder why an 18 year old college student making a little over 4K has to pay taxes at all. It just seems to me there should be a minimum amount of income that cannot be taxed. Make it something like 25K. If you make less than that a year, regardless of marital status or number of kids, you should not have to pay federal or state income taxes. I'm sure this position makes me slightly libertarian (but not quite a John Bircher). It just seems senseless to tax such a crappy little income, particularly for a student.

On to lighter thoughts: I've never considered myself much of a photographer, but I always seem to find something different about our little street (as seen from the living room window). This was the scene last night just before the street lamp turned off, amid a brief snow squall. A few years ago, I would have put on some boots and a heavy jacket just to walk the block in the muffled silence of a late night snow fall. Last night it just looked too damn cold.