Always file your taxes on time

It's one thing that almost all of us have to do...pay taxes. We all have to give some of our hard earned money to the government to spend as it pleases. And most of us don't like that, but it's part of life.

Sometimes people choose to not pay their taxes, which here in the US is known as not filing your taxes. That means when tax time comes, some people do not fill out and mail in the necessary tax reporting forms hoping that they will not be caught later on. Income taxes are based on how much money you earn during a year. After the end of the year, a calculation (or many) is made on the tax forms and you find out how much hard earned cash you now have to pay the government.

So what happens if you do not have any income that year? Maybe you lost your job and could not find work. So you did not have a paycheck for the entire year. It's possible. In this case, most people would think that they do not owe any income taxes.

Well, in Ohio this is not so. This week, it was made public that one tax payer there failed to pay a whole $1.16 in income taxes. So the city filed charges against the person. This person then had to find lawyers to appear in court. It turns out the city filed charges for $4,000 in fines and 18 months in jail for this person.

Now this person has been out of work for over four years and did not have any income. But, in this area of Ohio, they still tax the person $1.16. Since that was not paid, the city decided to go after the non-payer. After going to court and it becoming known by the public, the city decided to drop the charges since they finally realized that the case to prosecute the $1.16 was costing the citizens there thousands of dollars. And one of the possible outcomes in the case would be that the tax code there may be ruled illegal resulting in refunds to all the citizens. What government wants to return money? Not any that I know of.

So the moral of the story is to always pay your taxes, no matter how small an amount that may be. You never know when someone in the government will spend thousands of tax dollars just to get you to pay $1.16.

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