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THE BEST THINGS IN LIFE ARE FREE, WHY NOT EVERYTHING? |
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After dealing with the Great Soviet Encyclopedia for the last couple of weeks and exposing its insults to common sense and common knowledge I’m retuning today to the U.S.A., where such things are unknown…are they? Fresh from full immersion in the Soviet sheepdip I find myself getting splashed by the brand dished out by the “Social Justice" movement in the New York City public schools, which one of our local papers has just exposed.
It seems that some crazed mathematics teachers in the high schools have gotten together to teach math in a new way starting this fall when a new school term begins. It won’t anymore be that dull old stuff about John having six dollars and James having sixteen and what do they do about it. In the new curriculum James’s superior cash position proves that he is a capitalist pig and must share the wealth with John or catch the next train out to Siberia. That is the general thrust of the educational plan proposed by the math collective led by Professor Marilyn Frankenstein of the University of Massachusetts mathematics department. My own bet is that John won’t learn what a math lesson usually is designed to teach -- how to add up the two sums and divide them according to a rule -- but will easily grasp the idea that James should give up his sixteen bucks without further ado. A Google search for the names of people supporting this educational plan leads me to believe that they are not the kind to object to this solution. Redistribution is their answer to all the problems of the world.
The escapees working on this plan to debauch arithmetic, algebra, geometry and trigonometry are all teachers in the unfortunate public schools of New York, the administration of which actually gave them a grant to promote their indoctrination efforts.
One of the “subjects” they want to “teach” is the activity of H&R Block and Jackson Hewitt in “ripping off the poor”. I know what they’re talking about. I worked for both of those outfits. In other words I was a monster, a fascist one grinding the faces of the poor, at least in the eyes of people like Dr. Frankenstein, and with a name like that she ought to know a monster when she sees one.
I won’t deny that, yes, I did deal with the poor and again yes, I did engage in so-called monstrosities when doing so. One of our favorite atrocities in Jackson Hewitt when I worked for them was the Instant Refund. This is actually the outrage on which Dr. Frankenstein’s whole campaign against Hewitt and Block is based. She sees it as a crime against the poor. Her problem is, the poor don’t agree with her. Not the ones I met anyway. They wanted that money and they weren’t interested in her attempts to prevent them getting it.
Instant, as we’ll call it, was a fairly simple operation involving a tax return that called for a refund of tax overwithheld, which we then offered to obtain for the taxpayers overnight if they preferred that to waiting six weeks for their money. Most of them didn’t have to be asked; they knew all about it and they had come to our office to get it. They knew we were the quickest in the business and actually would have their money the next day instead of in three days, which was the best Block could do at the time.
Having obtained the taxpayer’s consent, we then faxed their return to IRS in Washington where the identity of the payer was scanned against records of defaulters on student loans, child support payments, tax bills and other governmental obligations and if cleared, had the refund tentatively approved. The approval was then faxed to a local bank, which cut a check for the amount of the refund to the taxpayer, who signed a consent for the Treasury to credit the actual refund to the bank, where IRS would send it later.
The end result was that the Treasury had a tax return out of the way, the taxpayer had his money, and the bank and Jackson Hewitt had fee income for all the steps involved in the transaction. It was not a gift to the taxpayer, but taxpayers don’t expect gifts.
What they expect, and want, in these cases is instant access to their refunds, and they are willing to pay for it. It’s of no use to preach to them about the evils of instant gratification and the desirability of the deferred kind. It’s also not the business of a tax preparer to tell the taxpayer what he should do with his own money. He has no right to make judgments about the customer’s decisions thereupon. He may want the money for some illegal or immoral purpose, or he may need it for some emergency expense that has to be met immediately. This concerns him and nobody else.
We treated the customers as grownups who knew what they wanted, and knew they would have to pay for it. Instant Refunds were so popular in fact that they had changed the whole face of the tax business. I came to Hewitt after several years out of the business, where I had last worked for Block. In those days the flood of returns crested in April, when return-checking went to hell and all that could be done was to try and keep up with the flood by staying late each night until the day’s returns had been assembled and sent to IRS. This had now all changed and business reached its height in February, not in April. This was all due to instant refunds. People received their W-2s by January 31st as the law required and the day after they arrived on our doorstep to apply for their refunds. The use of computers, which we hadn’t had to any extent in my earlier stretch in the business, had now made it possible for us to process the refunds and the bank loans involved overnight and in fact expedite the whole practice of tax preparation in a way that hadn’t been possible before.
All I see here is a normal development of our time where electronics enable funds to be handled more efficiently than before. The money that IRS now returns more quickly to its owners is money it has always claimed it didn’t want. IRS has always discouraged overpayments and has tried to instruct taxpayers to avoid them. But millions of them actually want “forced savings” and pay no attention. Once the refund falls due, though, they want no delay in getting it. Far from “ripping them off” the tax preparers fill their pockets weeks earlier than IRS would have done it. For their investment in the hardware and software necessary for this they collect a reasonable fee. The Frankenstein faction object to this. They seem to want no fee charged. After all, they intend to teach their pupils that “all food should be as free as breathing the air”. Regarding themselves, they feel that, unlike the farmers for their produce, they should be paid for their product. It’s known as “education”. At least that’s what they call it. | | |
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