Grandma's House

Markeeta Gould ran into a little problem in her town of Mansfield, Ohio. She made the horrible mistake of not paying her 2001 city income taxes, and was arrested in front of her children. They had to arrest her, you know, because she owed them the ungodly amount of 96 cents. Bloodsuckers.

Don't get me wrong. I believe if you owe taxes you should pay them. The biggest problem I have with this article came in the following excerpt:

But Finance Director Sandra Converse said the city has a mandatory income tax return filing requirement for working-age residents -- whether they earned income or not.

That's right. As long as your within their so-called working age, you have to file a form, whether you worked or not. Talk about big brother; this certainly sounds like it qualifies. But in their own defense, they made this statement:

"We don't know what people owe if they do not file," she said. "We wouldn't be doing our jobs if we didn't enforce this (filing rule). Sometimes people owe quite a bit of money and that's why they haven't filed."
Individuals who did not work "can file a zero return, telling us that they made nothing, that they did not work," Converse said.

Give me a freakin' break. Technically, I'm still at a working age, and I haven't worked since 1991. If I lived there, I'd still be filing their stupid tax forms, even though I haven't had to pay taxes for 14 years. There is something seriously wrong here.