It’s Friday so that must mean it’s time to open the mailbag at Castle Sidewalker. I’m going to take a departure from the normal format this week. After my recent posts on tax, I received this correspondence from a fellow Sidewalker in the United Kingdom. In this day and age where we are always looking to abrevi8 evry thng mainly due 2 twts n’ txt, I thought the following letter should be viewed in its entirety. To give it some context, it was inspired by my FiLife article on tax.

Dear Luke,
I know nothing of tax and to be honest that’s for the best. If I did I would have exploded long ago I suspect. However, consider this:
A company earns a pound/dollar (the existence of which you inform me proves it has already been taxed).
The company pays corporation tax or the US equivalent and employers’ national insurance.[LS: Social Security in the USA]
The company pays an employee who donates income tax and employees’ national insurance.
The happy employee spends half of what is left. The price of the item the employee buys includes VAT, GST or whatever it is.
The employee invests the remainder for the children – obviously paying tax on any interest earned.
On receiving their inheritance the kids pay inheritance tax.
Spending what’s left involves paying VAT, GST etc etc.

My point: if you can get 67c for a dollar take their arm off.

Meanwhile, in this country at least, the “glorious leaders” are out buying houses for their ducks out of taxpayers’ money (though not their salary which is, of course, paid by the taxpayer).
Obviously, I’ve got not a clue if the above is correct but suspect it’s not too far from the truth. If you can allay my concerns I would be most grateful.

Your loyal correspondent,

LS: Thank you ‘Loyal Correspondent’ for taking the time to share your observations. As for allaying your concerns I fear I will disappoint you. At this point I feel I could only exacerbate said concerns. I’m sorry my friend from across the ocean, “We’re all taxpayers now…”

In other news, Mrs Sidewalker found our first dollar bill yesterday (or should that be our first 67c bill). It looks a little out of place in our ‘change’ jar!

And I still need help and comments with my investment portfolio in the post below this one, all comments welcome.

Have a great weekend…

-Luke Sidewalker
-Current balance $22.57

I took a stroll into town yesterday. I was walking by the Rite Aid (RAD.N) again so I decided to cut through the parking lot having found money there previously and what do you know, there was a shiny penny waiting there for me.

Not too long ago Rite Aid was in financial trouble. It appears all they needed to do was send their staff into the parking lots of their stores to rectify their balance sheet woes! I also snagged another penny in downtown Hoboken as advertised on my cash trail map to the right.

In other news today, Goldman Sachs (GS.N) reported Q1 earnings almost double what was expected. I don’t want to be cynical, but as a taxpayer this definitely smells fishy.

-Luke Sidewalker
-Current balance $6.89