If you get a tax refund, are you buying a new tuba?

[bloke]

If we end up with one, we're thinking about buying one of these:

[bort2.0]

I have never understood the desire to have a large tax refund. “Hooray, I overpaid ALL YEAR long so the government could hold my money interest free!”

[bloke]

I have never understood the desire to have a large tax refund. “Hooray, I overpaid ALL YEAR long so the government could hold my money interest free!”

yep...and my joke spoke to multiple issues...
- top-down engineered reckless hyperinflation
- increase of tax brackets (by about 5.4% for 2024)
- me attempting to not overpay throughout the year

[LeMark]

nope, I am self employed, so I never get a refund

and if I do buy a tuba, I usually sell something or somethings to pay for it

[BRS]

.

[djwpe]

I have never understood the desire to have a large tax refund. “Hooray, I overpaid ALL YEAR long so the government could hold my money interest free!”

Or even dumber, the people who view a large refund as a gift from the government.

[Mary Ann]

I am still putting it off, but somehow I always end up paying a small penalty for under-payment. I'd rather give them a $30 penalty than have them able to use my money to go bomb the enemy du jour.

[bloke]

I am still putting it off, but somehow I always end up paying a small penalty for under-payment. I'd rather give them a $30 penalty than have them able to use my money to go bomb the enemy du jour.

Now @Mary Ann , you know good and well that there's no truth-telling nor reasonable thought allowed here; those things are called "politics".

[Tim Jackson]

I will get a refund for 2023 because we replaced the roofs on 2 rental houses. Yes, we spent a lot of money and a refund is really just getting back some of the money we paid in but... it is always nice to get some back. Either way, I plan on having a horn restored & replated this year which will be a deduction. A gift to me in a way. At the same time, I received an IRS love note the other day stating my 2015 return was late (no money owed just late)- a penalty of 10% of my salary plus interest. Makes me want to take my horn to the nearest IRS office and play a bunch of 16th notes! To answer the question: yes, I will spend some money this year on related tuba stuff just to offset taxable income.

TJ

[dsfinley]

If you make some plain ol ground beef tacos. Chop up some bacon and cook it with it. Your tummy and taste buds will thank me. Your heart not so much

[bloke]

If you make some plain ol ground beef tacos. Chop up some bacon and cook it with it. Your tummy and taste buds will thank me. Your heart not so much

I guess depending on other ingredients that don't occur to me, the most toxic thing to the circulatory system in a taco is the taco shell. If someone ate nothing but taco meat, cheese, lettuce, a little bit of onion, and a little bit of no sugar taco sauce, that's an extremely heart healthy diet, including bacon. It seems like the majority of doctors are still spreading the low-fat nonsense.

duh...and known by skeptics-of-narratives and do-their-own-investigative-research individuals for quite some time...
...while billionaires elitists (who view us as surplus livestock) are encouraging us to eat bugs.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/health/ne ... se-5595725

[tofu]

.

[bloke]

What do you expect your tyrant rulers to be? ...nice?

[Finetales]

I'm a freelancer, so I always owe a hefty amount at tax time.

[humBell]

I can safely say, someday i will buy a new tuba. (and not just "new to me"... pretty sure that is usually how buying works)

So yes.

A tax refund (should it occur) will be entirely coincidental.

(Note to self: do taxes. Thanks for the reminder!)

[Tim Jackson]

As far as my tax debacle goes, I did get a notice in 2018. My accountant sent an abatement request letter. Who knows where that ended up. I think they have a whole floor devoted to combing through my stuff.

BACK TO TUBA TAX TIME.
If I am getting money back, I figure I had plenty of deductions. Typical year and I probably already spent too much. (NO TUBA YEAR)
If I forecast not getting money back, I will buy a tuba. I like deductions! I will spent X a year on the music biz. Every once in a while the $ needle lands on… TUBA

If I see a good deal on dream tuba the formula offered above is out the window.

TJ

[WC8KCY]

Ever since I started filing taxes in 1987--with the exception of the lockdown year of 2020--I've typically broke even. When I owe tax due or have a refund coming, it's less than $10.

If this is a refund year, I might spring for a tube o' sausage:

[Tubeast]

I totally agree with the notion that Taco ingredients will contribute an integral part to a well-balanced, healthy diet. Same goes with taco shells, provided you prepare those from scratch using flour (doesn´t really matter which kind, but I guess corn will be the original), water and maybe a pinch of salt.

As to eating bugs: I personally wouldn´t mind those. What´s good enough for a bear is good enough for me.
Shrimp have been a delicatesse in our societies ever since most of us emancipated from unnecessary rules held up by old hand-wringers and are not all that dissimilar to fried locusts.

Over here, it´s not billionaires promoting bug food.
Rather, established food-industry-magnates will frown upon bug food promoters.
Those will rather be somewhat strange startup-founders (either they are of the tree-hugging alternative type, or they are ultra-hip startup-founding shark tank candidates or a team of both. Quite the opposite to billionaires, one might think...)

[donn]

Tortillas are made from corn, in the form of nixtamal. Cooked with lime to effect some chemical changes that make it far more nutritious. You can do this yourself, but the thing that I think gives people the most trouble is mashing up the cooked kernels, and then there's getting ahold of good flour corn kernels and lime. Masa harina flour can be made up to about the same thing a lot easier, and of course there's commercial tortillas, some of which are good. (None of this is to be had in Portugal, so I'm planting a Oaxacan corn variety and crossing my fingers. They grow a lot of flint corn here, but it hasn't turned out very well for masa.)

I'd eat bugs if necessary, but I wouldn't expect them to be as good as shrimp. Crustaceans have a big biochemistry difference in that their circulatory system is based on copper rather than iron; maybe that's why, or for whatever reason, bugs can't compare. The test of my theory would be scorpions, since they are terrestrial arthropods with copper blood.

[Mary Ann]

Historically I think lobster was considered a poor person's food. When I lived in RI, we could go pick mussels ourselves, and that was the best seafood I've ever had, no comparison to mussels you buy in a store. If I could catch my own lobster, I'd have no problem eating that kind of bug. Way back when, like in the 1970s, we were travelling up the coast of Maine during vacation time, and you could buy cooked freshly-caught whole lobsters at roadside stands for a dollar apiece. And gobble-gobble right there on the side of the road.