The Daddy Tax

Daddy Tax: [da-de taks ] noun plural: —xes. 1. The portion of a child's meal, Halloween candy, video game time, etc. that a father rightly takes as his own, mostly because the child wouldn't be there without him. This particularly applies to things that a father buys for a child. 2. The primary method fathers teach the principle: “there are no free lunches.”

The above definition is an amalgamation of the definition available at urban dictionary (http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=daddy%20tax).

The US Tax Code is referenced in US Law as “Title 26 of the US Code of Federal Regulations.” It consists of 20 volumes, comprised of 13,458 pages of litigation [futily] trying to explain every conceivable circumstance under which the government feels it should be entitled to collect dollars from American citizens. For just $974 you too can own a copy of the tax code! But wait! That's not all! For another $179 you can have the additional 3,387 pages Congress added—bringing the total to 16,845 pages of legislative accounting blather. So the cost of knowing what taxes will cost you (and just Federal taxes) is, one might say, "taxing." I slay myself, but I digress.

In nearly seventeen thousand pages of composed chaos, the government manages to mention the Daddy Tax by name exactly 233^0 times.

(For those of you who don't like math, this is a very controversial statement—any number raised to the 0 power should be 1, except you can't divide by 0...so it's actually 0 or more specifically undefined. Some even like to say impossible!) Okay, so if you're one of those people that just flipped to the back of the book to get the answers...233^0 is nothing.

Isn't this riveting? Back to the Daddy Tax.

Maleen made brownies tonight. I like brownies. I like brownies so much that as self-appointed King of the Realm, I levied a hefty tax on brownies. The girls each got a brownie about one and a half inch square, and then I got mine: something in the realm of four and a half inches somewhat rectangular. The girls asked for another brownie, and the King of the Realm replied with a simple, “No,” while I was shoveling in another brownie.

There are NO FREE LUNCHES, (unless you've earned them by being King of the Realm, but that wasn't free either, was it).

Now before all you moms get after me for depriving my children of the comforts of life, let it be known that the subjects receive adequate comforts of life; the Daddy Tax is rarely invoked; and finally (and most importantly) it's my Realm, so I arrest and execute every traitor to the Realm that dare speak against the Daddy Tax.

Excuse me, it's time for another brownie.

PS, the education on tax code is free—you're welcome.