Artist's Almanac: April 2013

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Now comes that wastrel, spring,
Scattering her blossoms to the winds,
Making more promises
Than summer can ever keep.

The Primavera by Sandro Botticelli 1482

The Mythical Allegory, La Primavera, is one of the most famous paintings in the history of Art. The coming of spring, presided over by Venus. Botticelli indicates there are 500 identified plant species depicted in the painting, with about 190 different flowers, which flowers depicted, at least 130 have been specifically named.

My Cherry Blossoms this year

These trees worked all year to produce their lovely blossoms, the same are chosen to line The Tidal Basin of our Capital in Washington City. Young George, for whom it was named, early proved his integrity by admitting to the destruction of one of these beauties and this confession may well have set him on his noble upward path to glory.

Like the trees, we toil a year in heat, dark, cold and sun to produce a crop we call our annual income, only to have our first fruits plucked by our Federal Government on April 15th in a heavy tithe of income tax. Mankind has always paid taxes, and they may have once been worse, as they are today in totalitarian regimes around the world. A knock on the door and a demand for what you have, or a brutal seizure of crops, stored grain or livestock. The Turks assessed the Palestinians based upon the number of trees growing on their land, which is why the Holy Land is so barren of forests today.

Yet taxes have never been this complicated. Our income tax code is so burdened with indecipherable, inconsistent laws and regulations, that tests run by having 50 IRS agents charged with assisting befuddled taxpayers prepare 50 returns using identical data came up with 50 different answers.

I spent my professional life as a CPA trying to understand the Internal Revenue Code and its Regulations, now swelled to the size of several Bibles. I confess I still cannot clearly understand the difference between capital gain and ordinary income, or understand why the Hedge Fund Manager pays less tax by describing his gain on a so-called “carried interest” - an investment he made in time but not dollars – as capital gain, while the salaried worker or wage earner, whose only capital is himself, pays tax on what he earns with it at the higher rates on ordinary income.

And that’s only Federal Income Taxes- the largest and most visible one. There are also payroll taxes for Social Security and Medicare, state, county and city taxes, estate taxes, property taxes, sales taxes, unemployment insurance for employees, excise taxes, real estate transfer taxes, vehicle stickers, and extra taxes on airline tickets. There are traffic tolls, gas taxes and even sales taxes on the casket and vault chosen for your final resting place. Then there are corporate income taxes passed on to individuals as price increases. Finally, there is the lottery, or voluntary “dumb tax” on the poor, used to increase college tuitions by like amounts in the fastest inflating cost in the index. How much do people pay? 50%? 60%? Even 70%?! Nobody knows, but at some point the poison seeps in and the tree simply quit bearing, quits growing, or withers and dies. Vast differences in state taxes have caused much of the interstate immigration in our country.

April 15th kept us from enjoying much spring beauty this year, shuttering us inside, stressing and assessing ourselves using forms none of us understand. We need a new law requiring every member of Congress and the Administration to prepare his or her own income tax return, using pencil, paper and a calculator, without aid from a CPA or other professional tax preparer. This may help them to appreciate the laws they have imposed upon us.

At least we do not have to pay a tax on the Early Richmond cherries I harvest for good wife to make into a tart cherry pie in early summer. Neither do the birds.

The Three Graces – Beauty, Chastity, Creativity, Detail from Primavera, Botticelli

    
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