The government is a bully.

Before I get into the story, I am not against paying taxes. The situation is that I owed back taxes to the state of Massachusetts. I won’t get into the details but it was my fault that I owed taxes. I drove for Uber for a year and that was that.

What I am against is how my tax money is used, so I will take a brief detour here. I am going to just list my problems.

My taxes shouldn’t go to Ukraine. Taxes shouldn’t be paid for free benefits for immigrants who didn’t go through the proper process. Taxes shouldn’t be paid to private corporations, such as construction contractors and pharmaceutical companies without a public accounting of how that money is used, and these companies can’t hide behind proprietary firewalls. Public money was given to them so what it was used for should be accessible by the public. I could list more, a lot more.

Back to my story.

The DOR of Massachusetts put a levy on my paycheck. A 75% levy of my take home pay. And the agent at the DOR refused to lift the levy until she finished going through my tax returns. A two week process. This would mean 3 of my paychecks would be levied. I get paid biweekly.

She didn’t have to keep the levy. She did it because she could, and she felt slighted by me because I didn’t call her when I got a new job. I had a levy on my paycheck from my previous job, so why would I volunteer to have one on my new job. Bad decision, I know, but I think many reading this may have done the same thing.

Now, up to the point when my accountant filed my belated returns, the MA DOR had received approximately $10,000 of my money, either through the levy or IRS refunds owed to me. The IRS refunds went to the DOR. She had this money on record as being received yet still decided to keep the 75% levy on my pay. (It was actually around 78% but who’s counting.) Her behavior was childish, an abuse of power. Money was paid towards my back taxes but she acted like a woman scorned, maybe to make an example out of me.

There are a few ridiculous aspects to this. I was “out of compliance” because I didn’t file a tax return. I said to my accountant that I was out of compliance because I owed taxes. He said I was either way, whether I owed or they owed me. My internal response was, yeah, maybe technically but not in reality. If the state owed me taxes they wouldn’t care if I was out of compliance.

Speaking of being owed a refund. If I am owed a refund but I do not submit a return, the state wouldn’t send me letters or call me to let me know I was owed a refund. I would only have 3 years to file a return after the tax year to get the refund, with no interest. After that time, they would determine that I didn’t want the money so they put it into some slush fund for political galas or something pointless. I know this because Rhode Island owed me a refund as a non-resident of the state. I submitted my return two years later and they kept the money.

Then there’s the fees and interest the DOR can arbitrarily add on. I will just leave it at that.

The moral of the story is monitor your taxes. I recommend figuring out how to get as close to breaking even as possible. Owe an amount that you can afford to pay. If we continue to overpay our tax obligations so we can get a “refund”, the government could eventually just say “Yeah, we want to give your refund to people who never paid into the public tax coffers. Maybe next year.”

I could say more, I suppose, but there are others who complain about taxes better than I do.