Last week I prepared my tax return.

I carefully checked household expense receipts. I double checked the numbers on my W-2. I gathered bank forms showing earned interest. I made a spreadsheet to check my math and make sure all expenses/income were correctly sorted and verified.

Then I stopped and asked myself: Why? Why am I taking all this time and care to file my taxes correctly when the current occupants of the White House proudly proclaim they don’t pay any taxes? Why should I pay when they use every loophole and expensive lawyers to avoid paying any taxes?

Then I thought about the current un-Constitutional dissolution of government agencies and illegal freezing of funds as appropriated by Congress. Where would my taxes even go? My dad needs his social security check, but who’s left to process it? What are my taxes paying for, if USAID, the CDC, the FAA, the CFPB, the EPA, the DOE, the Treasury, Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare are being shut down? There’s the military, of course, but that budget is exempt from DOGE, an illegal non-governmental department, scrutiny, at least thus far.

The IRS is itself being dismantled, so who is left to process my tax filing?

The Republican’s budget proposal raises taxes for me and everyone I know, while billionaires’ taxes will go down.

Why are we paying federal taxes? What will we get for them, if they are even processed and deposited somewhere?

Allison Rimmer, Vergennes