Saturday, November 16, 2013

A penalty that needs to be revised

We all know that if we don't file our income tax returns on time, there is a consequence to that failure on our part.  That is, if we owe money to the IRS.  If you are due a refund, there is no penalty if you don't file on time; because the penalty is calculated as a percentage of the balance due.

Unfortunately for people I know, the California Franchise Tax Board does it a bit differently and I believe their method to be totally unfair.  You see, if you fail to file your California income tax return on time, the penalty is calculated on the tax liability for the year, rather than on the balance due at the due date of the return.

Here's an example.  Let's suppose your tax return shows that your CA tax for the year is $10,000.  Now you had $9,500 taken out of your pay toward that liability through withholding.  So your balance due is only $500.  But for whatever reason, you failed to file the return on time.  And you didn't file it for over five months beyond the due date.

Your penalty is 5% per month for a maximum of five months.  If it was a Federal return, the IRS penalty would be 5% of $500 for five months, or $125 ($25 per month times five months).  But if it was a California return, the FTB penalty is calculated on the entire $10,000.  So your penalty of 5% per month for five months isn't only $125.  It's $2,500 ($500 per month times five months).

It's ridiculous in comparison.  I'm so pissed by this unfairness I'm actually considering a Change.Org petition.  Something I don't normally do.  By that I mean I don't normally even consider such a move, let alone start one.  But I might.

* * *

I got good news today.  I won't be having that minor surgery.  At least not now.  My ejection fraction has improved enough to the point they no longer find me at the level of risk of sudden cardiac death that mandates a defibrillator.

But I won't feel sanguine about this until I see my own cardiologist next month.

* * *

I'm excited about playing trivia tonight.  And next Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday nights.  But since my work schedule is being scaled back for a combination of reasons, I can't do that indefinitely.  So I'll have to probably limit trivia to two, maybe three times per week.  If I do get some other work I want, I can do three times a week until year's end. 

Funny thing is, even though I really want to go tonight, I'm still exhausted in spite of having spent almost all of the last two days just resting.  I'm going to go to the primary care clinic on Monday and have them look at me.  Maybe it's just a sinus infection.

* * *

Hearing that the current head of the Natural Resources Defense Council is going to retire reminds me of how much I admire their founding president, John Adams.  The newspaper article I read about the retirement of the incumbent did what a lot of articles do, linked to prior pieces about our nation's second President, rather than the amazing attorney/environmentalist who did so much to help preserve our environment.  You can read his bio here:  http://www.nrdc.org/about/jha.asp

I never had the pleasure of meeting him but spent a lot of time interviewing him on the phone back in 1986/1987 when his group was involved in an independent effort in collaboration with the Soviet Academy of Sciences to use seismic equipment to monitor nuclear testing in Nevada and in Kazakhstan.  He was always honest, open and polite.  If I were going to write one biography, it would be his.

* * *

Random Ponderings:

BatKid's saving of "Gotham City" today is awesome.

From the "way too late" file, it seems silly for a Harrisburg, PA newspaper to retract its op-ed piece from 150 years ago, panning the Gettysburg Address.  Then again, always good to correct the record, even after 150 years.

I'd really like to know why Rep Michelle Bachman is losing her health insurance.  She's going to be in Congress until December of 2014.  She doesn't have to pay for coverage through an exchange, members of Congress will continue to have the government funding the premiums for their healthcare.  Is she lying?  Maybe.

A hospital that suspended an employee because he insisted on having the phrase "God Bless America" is wrong to have done what they did.  He is a retired Army vet, and funny how they brought him back to work the day after Veterans Day.

Is the housing market in Florida that bad that the owner of a mansion priced at $13 million is throwing in a Rolls-Royce worth $500,000 into the deal?  Apparently so.

I won't pass judgment on the Ohio couple that returned the child they adopted until I hear their side of the story.  Then I'll let them have it with both barrels.  Children don't come with return privileges.

An Arizona couple vacationing in Thailand will probably post their own negative review of the dive company whose boat captain left them stranded out in open water.  They said they'd chosen the company because of positive reviews.

Bret Favre says football is too dangerous for kids.  Maybe the problem isn't that it's too dangerous for kids, it is too dangerous for anyone.

Alec Baldwin needs to admit he said the "f*g" word, apologize and learn to control his temper.  Trotting out his gay hairdresser friend doesn't prove he is not a homophobe.  Using that epithet proves he is.

* * *

November 15th  In History:

655 – Battle of the Winwaed: Penda of Mercia is defeated by Oswiu of Northumbria.
1315 – Battle of Morgarten: The Schweizer Eidgenossenschaft ambushes the army of Leopold I.
1532 – Commanded by Francisco Pizarro, Spanish conquistadors under Hernando de Soto meet Inca Empire leader Atahualpa for the first time outside Cajamarca, arranging a meeting on the city plaza the following day.
1533 – Francisco Pizarro arrives in Cuzco, the capital of the Inca Empire.
1688 – The Glorious Revolution begins: William of Orange lands at Brixham.
1705 – Battle of Zsibó: Austrian-Danish victory over the Kurucs (Hungarians).
1777 – American Revolutionary War: After 16 months of debate the Continental Congress approves the Articles of Confederation.
1791 – The first U.S. Catholic college, Georgetown University, opens its doors.
1806 – Pike expedition: Lieutenant Zebulon Pike sees a distant mountain peak while near the Colorado foothills of the Rocky Mountains. (It is later named Pikes Peak.)
1859 – The first modern revival of the Olympic Games takes place in Athens, Greece.
1864 – American Civil War: Union General William Tecumseh Sherman burns Atlanta, Georgia and starts Sherman's March to the Sea.
1889 – Brazil is declared a republic by Marshal Deodoro da Fonseca as Emperor Pedro II is deposed in a military coup.
1914 – Harry Turner becomes the first player to die from game-related injuries in the "Ohio League", the direct predecessor to the National Football League.
1920 – First assembly of the League of Nations is held in Geneva, Switzerland.
1922 – Over 1,000 are massacred during a general strike in Guayaquil, Ecuador.
1923 – The German Rentenmark is introduced in Germany to counter hyperinflation in the Weimar Republic.
1926 – The NBC radio network opens with 24 stations.
1928 – The RNLI lifeboat Mary Stanford capsized in Rye Harbour with the loss of the entire 17 man crew.
1935 – Manuel L. Quezon is inaugurated as the second President of the Philippines.
1939 – In Washington, D.C., US President Franklin D. Roosevelt lays the cornerstone of the Jefferson Memorial.
1942 – World War II: First flight of the Heinkel He 219.
1942 – World War II: The Battle of Guadalcanal ends in a decisive Allied victory.
1943 – The Holocaust: German SS leader Heinrich Himmler orders that Gypsies are to be put "on the same level as Jews and placed in concentration camps". (See Porajmos.)
1945 – Venezuela joins the United Nations.
1949 – Nathuram Godse and Narayan Apte are executed for assassinating Mahatma Gandhi.
1951 – Greek resistance leader Nikos Beloyannis, along with 11 resistance members, is sentenced to death by the court-martial.
1959 – The murders of the Clutter Family in Holcomb, Kansas, which inspired Truman Capote's non-fiction book In Cold Blood.
1966 – Project Gemini: Gemini 12 completes the program's final mission, when it splashes down safely in the Atlantic Ocean.
1966 – A Boeing 727 carrying Pan Am Flight 708 crashes near Berlin, Germany, killing all three people on board.
1967 – The only fatality of the North American X-15 program occurs during the 191st flight when Air Force test pilot Michael J. Adams loses control of his aircraft which is destroyed mid-air over the Mojave Desert.
1969 – Cold War: The Soviet submarine K-19 collides with the American submarine USS Gato in the Barents Sea.
1969 – Vietnam War: In Washington, D.C., 250,000-500,000 protesters staged a peaceful demonstration against the war, including a symbolic "March Against Death".
1971 – Intel releases the world's first commercial single-chip microprocessor, the 4004.
1976 – René Lévesque and the Parti Québécois take power to become the first Quebec government of the 20th century clearly in favor of independence.
1978 – A chartered Douglas DC-8 crashes near Colombo, Sri Lanka, killing 183.
1979 – A package from Unabomber Ted Kaczynski begins smoking in the cargo hold of a flight from Chicago to Washington, D.C., forcing the plane to make an emergency landing.
1983 – Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus is founded. Recognized only by Turkey.
1985 – A research assistant is injured when a package from the Unabomber addressed to a University of Michigan professor explodes.
1985 – The Anglo-Irish Agreement is signed at Hillsborough Castle by British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and Irish Taoiseach Garret FitzGerald.
1987 – Continental Airlines Flight 1713, a Douglas DC-9-14 jetliner, crashes in a snowstorm at Denver's Stapleton International Airport, killing 28 occupants, while 54 survive the crash.
1987 – In Brașov, Romania, workers rebel against the communist regime of Nicolae Ceaușescu.
1988 – In the Soviet Union, the unmanned Shuttle Buran makes its only space flight.
1988 – Israeli–Palestinian conflict: An independent State of Palestine is proclaimed by the Palestinian National Council.
1988 – The first Fairtrade label, Max Havelaar, is launched in the Netherlands.
1990 – Space Shuttle program: Space Shuttle Atlantis launches with flight STS-38.
1990 – The Communist People's Republic of Bulgaria is disestablished and a new republican government is instituted.
2000 – A chartered Antonov An-24 crashes after takeoff from Luanda, Angola, killing more than 40 people.
2000 – Jharkhand state comes into existence in India.
2002 – Hu Jintao becomes General Secretary of the Communist Party of China and a new nine-member Politburo Standing Committee is inaugurated.
2003 – The first day of the 2003 Istanbul bombings, in which two car bombs, targeting two synagogues, explode, killing 25 people and wounding about 300. Additional bombings follow on November 20.
2006 – Al Jazeera English launches worldwide.

Famous Folk Born on November 15th:

John I of France
Pope Nicholas V
William Herschel
Lewis Stone
Felix Frankfurter
Georgia O'Keeffe
W. Averell Harriman
Erwin Rommel (took his own life to save his wife and children)
General Curtis LeMay (the man who made Strategic Air Command into a viable threat during the Cold War, and candidate for VP as George Wallace's running mate in 1968)
Montovani (I hear that name and I think of this film moment:  www.mwavs.com/0038067694/WAVS/Movies/Good_Morning_Vietnam/boring.wav)
Claus von Stauffenberg
Judge Joseph Wapner (wonder if he's well enough to substitute for the current judge on "The People's Court"?)
Howard Baker
C. W. McCall (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=le2bPRGvKXE I almost miss having a CB radio in my car...almost)
Ed Asner (only person I'm aware of who barred people from the set of projects he was involved with based on their political party membership)
Petula Clark (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUSYb3igXzI)
Yaphet Kotto (great Bond villain, and I had no idea he is Jewish)
Sam Waterston (Oscar nominee and winner of an Emmy and a Golden Globe)
Beverly D'Angelo (her maternal grandfather designed the stadium known as The Horseshoe at Ohio State)
Kevin Eubanks
Ol' Dirty Bastard
Chad Kroeger
Jonny Lee Miller
Sean Murray
Shailene Woodley

Movie quotes today bring to a close the week of war films with 1987's "Full Metal Jacket" -

Gunnery Sergeant Hartman: If you ladies leave my island, if you survive recruit training, you will be a weapon. You will be a minister of death praying for war. But until that day you are pukes. You are the lowest form of life on Earth. You are not even human fucking beings. You are nothing but unorganized grabastic pieces of amphibian shit! Because I am hard, you will not like me. But the more you hate me, the more you will learn. I am hard but I am fair. There is no racial bigotry here. I do not look down on niggers, kikes, wops or greasers. Here you are all equally worthless. And my orders are to weed out all non-hackers who do not pack the gear to serve in my beloved Corps. Do you maggots understand that?

#2

Gunnery Sergeant Hartman: Where the hell are you from anyway, private?
Private Cowboy: Sir, Texas, sir.
Gunnery Sergeant Hartman: Holy dog shit! Texas? Only steers and queers come from Texas, Private Cowboy, and you don't look much like a steer to me, so that kinda narrows it down. Do you suck dicks?
Private Cowboy: Sir, no, sir!
Gunnery Sergeant Hartman: Are you a peter puffer?
Private Cowboy: Sir, no, sir!
Gunnery Sergeant Hartman: I bet you're the kind of guy who would fuck a person in the ass and not even have the goddamn common courtesy to give him a reach-around. I'll be watching you!

#3

Da Nang Hooker: Hey, baby. You got girlfriend Vietnam?
Private Joker: Not just this minute.
Da Nang Hooker: Well, baby, me so horny. Me so HORNY. Me love you long time. You party?
Private Joker: Yeah, we might party. How much?
Da Nang Hooker: Fifteen dollar.
Private Joker: Fifteen dollars for both of us?
Da Nang Hooker: No. Each you fifteen dollar. Me love you long time. Me so HORNY.
Private Joker: Fifteen dollar too beaucoup. Five dollars each.
Da Nang Hooker: Me sucky-sucky. Me love you too much.
Private Joker: Five dollars is all my mom allows me to spend.
Da Nang Hooker: Okay. Ten dollar each.

#4

Private Cowboy: Don't shit me, man!
Private Joker: I wouldn't shit you. You're my favorite turd!