My mouth fell open in shock when I heard the tax preparer telling me that I will have to pay around $6,000 total taxes. The shock left me speechless and almost paralyzed for two days, as if I was literally hit by a bus.Paying taxes is not something new to me. I have been doing that ever since I set my feet in America. This time I was just not expecting to pay as much.
I calculated how much money I have and how much I can save before the payment deadline which is on April 15. I found out that I actually can pay the whole thing before the deadline but I will have to basically cut back on tons of stuff, including social activities so that I can at least pay rent, bills and groceries.
So I basically sucked it up and thought I’m not the only one in this country who pays taxes. However, something really plucked my nerves recently. It’s how the Washington DC city municipality responded (or not) to cleaning up what two successive blizzards left. I felt like Stewie Griffin in Family Guy when he yelled at Brian the dog asking him, “Where is my money?”
Indeed, WHERE IS MY MONEY?
Almost a week after the blizzard is over, many streets are still icy and dangerous. There are mounts of snow almost everywhere, making it impossible sometimes to run to catch the bus. Trash is unbelievably piling up in some of the fanciest neighborhoods in the city, like in this picture I took this morning at the bus stop. The buses are not running on regular schedule. It takes me between an hour and a half and two hours sometimes to get to work.I was so annoyed about this that I wrote my facebook status like this yesterday: “Bassam Sebti is wondering where all the thousands of dollars he pays for taxes are going when seeing the streets of the American capital a total mess. Mounts of snow, icy sidewalks and no trash pick-up. Where are we? Northern Afghanistan?"
The funniest and the perfect response for that came from a friend of mine who wrote, “No, you're in DC...but the money is going to Afghanistan.”
I couldn’t agree more!
