I had a related experience with my 91 year old father this year. I've been doing his taxes for a while now. Usually I pop them out of TurboTax and send them to him to be verified, signed, and submitted. This year I told him via email that he didn't have to file anymore because his income wasn't high enough. He accepted what I said, at first, but later came back and said that surely at least he needed to send them something to say he didn't need to pay, that surely they would come after him if he didn't. So I settled him down and he was OK for a while. To make a long story short, we had three rounds of that ending in him taking his old bones and old heart by bus to the city's federal building to get tax forms and doing them himself, a strain that I was trying to avoid. Such was his conditioning that he needed to file with the IRS. Finally, on April 15, after going through with him what he had done step by step I was able to persuade him. Although I'm not sure that he still doesn't have one ear to the door waiting for them to come and get him.
If you feel they should have to file income taxes for the peanuts they pay then find an easier way.
I said it was impractical.
But there is a pride and a burden in paying income taxes that, when we no longer share it, we lose something of our shared purpose. I didn't have the elderly in mind, who once paid but now have been relieved of that, but the younger folks who have never paid them but who get the benefits. The discussion was about couples with kids and $30K incomes. |
