I finally filled out the form for my 2018 renter's property-tax
refund this morning (one week before the deadline), and then I read
the fine print:
You don't get a refund if a relative provided 50+ percent of your income.
I could lie about it, but before I got the job at the thrift store, for half of last year, money from my father's death did pay my bills. It seems fair that I therefore pay my share. Property taxes pay for schools and other important stuff.
I tore up my refund form.
While I have no trouble accepting state health care (because there are no affordable options), I don't take food stamps and most other government programs, because there's not enough for everyone who needs it and who is not poor by choice, like I am.
"Poor by choice" is a weird way of putting it...
I'm not like Saint Francis, who sees Sister Poverty in herself as a Good. It's more that poverty tags along with other Goods I want, most especially free time.
(Hm. Actually, Francis would agree--poverty in itself is not the point––God is.)
And yet, Sister Poverty does benefit me too, and she fits my philosophy that it's good to be aware that we humans share limited resources. ("Take care of library books." "Leave some for the others.")
She serves my laziness too--or, my sense of what's worth expending effort on. That does not include cleaning multiple, futzy kitchen gadgets.
Just give me a knife and a pan.
I've enjoyed house sitting in this expensive house, because it's quiet. (Freedom from noise is among the best things money can buy.)
But, mygod, the work of taking care of all the stuff?
What a boring waste of time.
Of course you can be poor and own a ton of stuff--this is America--but still, this house comes with so much space, the stuff that fills it needs a lot of attending to:
You have to take the lawn-furniture pillows in at night; water house plants on two floors, and the porch plants, front and back; stock four bathrooms, etc.
I understand that some people love all this--including, presumably, the house-owners I'm sitting for. But I don't.
I'm excited about getting rid of stuff as I prepare to move at the end of this month.
I'm even jettisoning family history stuff. My parents are dead and my sister, brother, and I have no children, so I'm not hostage to the future in that "must save these photos" way.
I threw away years of my mother's letters a couple weeks ago. (I saved one representative one.)
That would have been unthinkable in the past... but now it's a relief.
It's not like we're ever free of history, anyway, no matter what we own: I carry my mother in my genes and my memory.
That's good enough.
A word modern people use for this choice isn't poverty, it's simplicity.
But I cringe at that word––a magazine called Simple Living is among the mail that has arrived here where I'm house sitting--so much mail, it fills a laundry basket.
Anyway, I do have riches and clutter--it's just in space!
Blogger won't be around forever, but for now, my history is recorded here. I didn't think of this in 2007 when I named my blog l'astronave––starship in Italian (I was thinking at the time of Star Trek)––but it does carry my story in space.
That's good enough too.
You don't get a refund if a relative provided 50+ percent of your income.
I could lie about it, but before I got the job at the thrift store, for half of last year, money from my father's death did pay my bills. It seems fair that I therefore pay my share. Property taxes pay for schools and other important stuff.
I tore up my refund form.
While I have no trouble accepting state health care (because there are no affordable options), I don't take food stamps and most other government programs, because there's not enough for everyone who needs it and who is not poor by choice, like I am.
"Poor by choice" is a weird way of putting it...
I'm not like Saint Francis, who sees Sister Poverty in herself as a Good. It's more that poverty tags along with other Goods I want, most especially free time.
(Hm. Actually, Francis would agree--poverty in itself is not the point––God is.)
And yet, Sister Poverty does benefit me too, and she fits my philosophy that it's good to be aware that we humans share limited resources. ("Take care of library books." "Leave some for the others.")
She serves my laziness too--or, my sense of what's worth expending effort on. That does not include cleaning multiple, futzy kitchen gadgets.
Just give me a knife and a pan.
I've enjoyed house sitting in this expensive house, because it's quiet. (Freedom from noise is among the best things money can buy.)
But, mygod, the work of taking care of all the stuff?
What a boring waste of time.
Of course you can be poor and own a ton of stuff--this is America--but still, this house comes with so much space, the stuff that fills it needs a lot of attending to:
You have to take the lawn-furniture pillows in at night; water house plants on two floors, and the porch plants, front and back; stock four bathrooms, etc.
I understand that some people love all this--including, presumably, the house-owners I'm sitting for. But I don't.
I'm excited about getting rid of stuff as I prepare to move at the end of this month.
I'm even jettisoning family history stuff. My parents are dead and my sister, brother, and I have no children, so I'm not hostage to the future in that "must save these photos" way.
I threw away years of my mother's letters a couple weeks ago. (I saved one representative one.)
That would have been unthinkable in the past... but now it's a relief.
It's not like we're ever free of history, anyway, no matter what we own: I carry my mother in my genes and my memory.
That's good enough.
A word modern people use for this choice isn't poverty, it's simplicity.
But I cringe at that word––a magazine called Simple Living is among the mail that has arrived here where I'm house sitting--so much mail, it fills a laundry basket.
Anyway, I do have riches and clutter--it's just in space!
Blogger won't be around forever, but for now, my history is recorded here. I didn't think of this in 2007 when I named my blog l'astronave––starship in Italian (I was thinking at the time of Star Trek)––but it does carry my story in space.
That's good enough too.
Wow! Renter's refund for property tax that the owner pays. We need that in Northern VA. I had never really thought that their property tax is being paid as part of my rent.
ReplyDeleteWhile a student at Univ of Tennessee, my first quarter was really tight. I did apply for food stamps but was told that because I had a car, I wasn't eligible but if I sold the car I would be. I asked them how could I commute to school then. No answer!
So went home and wrote my mother a letter with "s" as a dollar sign. She took pity and sent me $40 a month until I started a work-study job. I think the money went for oranges, orange marmalade, crackers and peanut butter which was about what I could afford on $10 a week.
Kirsten
KIRSTEN: Minnesota/Mpls has some fair and decent laws, I'd say, and renters getting a refund is one of them.
ReplyDeleteThe rules for how desperate you need to be to get aid are ridiculous and counterproductive---having a car is, as you say, sometimes necessary to get to work...
Your college diet makes me laugh (in sympathy and recongnition)--all orange, no green...