Tax Day Roundup

Some random thoughts as Tax Day comes to a close:

• My knee injury kept me from attending any of the "tea parties" in the area, but a lot of them took place around the country, and they were evidently well-attended. The DMN has a report on the ones in Dallas, Austin and Southlake, while a clearinghouse of blog posts about the parties nationwide may be found here. Instapundit has a lot of reports as well, many of which feature pictures.


• TaxProf Blog has an interesting chart of exactly where our federal taxes go.


• Think our tax system is too complicated? Check out this collection of Form 1040's from 1913 through 2006.


• Ari Fleischer thinks that it's bad for our democracy for half the country to be exempt from income taxes.


• And speaking of people who don't (or at least didn't) pay, many IRS employees are upset at the double standard between how average Joes who don't pay their taxes and Cabinet nominees who don't pay their taxes are treated. (I still can't stomach the idea of admitted tax cheat Tim Geithner as Treasury Secretary; it would have been a great symbolic gesture for him, on this day, to resign and offer himself to the authorities to pay for the crimes to which he openly confessed. But I guess taxes truly are for the little people.)


• This has nothing to do with taxes at all, but it's very cool: The YouTube Symphony, an orchestra made up of professional and amateur musicians from around the world (who auditioned by playing part of a new piece composed for the group, were selected as finalists by a panel representing many of the world's great orchestras and were voted upon by YouTube viewers) was scheduled to meet up in person in New York this week and perform at Carnegie Hall.


• And in one more piece of non-tax news, Ian Kinsler hit for the cycle in the Rangers game tonight (and he did it by the sixth inning!). I witnessed Mark Teixeira doing that for the Rangers in '04, and I had the good fortune to turn on the radio right when Gary Matthews, Jr. did it during a road game in Detroit.

As for me, April 15 was pretty much an ordinary day for me (save for the whole knee-injury thing, which I'll update momentarily); I sent my return in weeks ago and received my refund last week. It still blows my mind how many people are driving even now to the main post office in their city in order to get that postmark before midnight. Granted, I wait a bit longer when I owe money than when I'm getting a refund, but I still couldn't imagine waiting until the very, very last minute.

Update on me: I finally hobbled in to see the doctor this morning, and I was happy to discover that: The X-ray showed nothing out of sorts; the typical "does it hurt here?" poking around revealed that it only hurt in a few places; and whenever I had to ask my injured leg to do things it didn't want to do (i.e. helping lift it off the ground, which it doesn't really do under its own power quite yet), it started to feel better and my range of motion increased a bit.

I was given an MRI this afternoon to check for the types of little tears and micro-fractures that wouldn't show up on an X-ray (being in that machine is a little weird, but my head was able to stay just outside the chamber, and the special headphones they gave me made the half-hour go pretty quickly), and I'll get the results of that in the morning. If everything's OK there, it'll just be a matter of time, rest, and some pain relievers and muscle relaxants before the thing runs its course. If they find something, I might have to see an orthopaedist, but let's keep our fingers crossed that I can avoid that.