thirtyoneblog

I’m so amused by a story I’ve been reading in the news this morning. Yesterday, all the Dallas area Starbucks stores (or, evidently all the nationwide Starbucks) closed for 3 hours in the evening to have barista training. Apparently they think more help is needed in knowing how to steam milk and pour syrups. Whatever, I don’t drink coffee anyway.

But apparently there was a huge outcry of frustration at these closings. You’d think people’s electricity had been turned off. Instead, they were furious at not being able to buy an overpriced cup of (some say) inferior coffee for a whole three hours.

“The only place you can get a decent cup of coffee in Dallas is at Starbucks,” one woman said. Eh? Like I said, I’m no coffee drinker, but in a metropolitan area like this, you’ll have me believe there is *no* other acceptable cup of java? I’ve heard plenty of people complain about Starbucks. Some say they overroast the beans and the coffee tastes burned. And heaven knows, it costs about three times what it’s worth.

And hey, I’m no Starbucks hater. I know they’re ridiculously trendy, and pricey, and have driven a lot of small independent coffee shops right out of business. But that doesn’t stop me from picking up a chai latte now and then. I just don’t understand people that are so addicted to Starbucks that a three hour hiatus is akin to some kind of national emergency.

In addition to new gym members out the wazoo, January also brings the delightful season of the Walmart-esque tax preparers and their maddening TV commercials:

“Honey, I’m stuck.” “Well, ask for help.” “Can’t. We used a box. Box? Can you help me?”

H&R Block. We got people.

My personal opinion is, if someone’s taxes are simple enough that H&R Block can handle them, they are simple enough for even the village idiot to handle using TurboTax. Places like this drive me crazy because they fill their offices with employees who don’t know the first thing about taxes. I know this because I have known people who worked there, part time, who didn’t know any more about taxes than my dog knows. Not that those people weren’t intelligent. They were smart cookies. But they weren’t tax professionals. It was strictly a seasonal, hourly gig because they needed to pay the rent.

In addition to deceiving people into thinking they had real tax professionals preparing their taxes, these tax places also shop delightful extras like refund anticipation loans, which of course carry an interest rate akin to what you might find at a payday loan shop, or perhaps from a back-alley loan shark. Who in their right mind would do this? Of course, it’s my professional opinion that tax refund ought to be near zero, because why would anyone let the IRS borrow their money interest-free for a year when they could be getting it at the time it was earned via a larger paycheck? Why do people set their W-4’s to ensure they get thousands back in April, a year late? You don’t want to get me started on this, because it would be a whole post unto itself.

The point of this post is that apparently the IRS is trying to crack down on these practices which IMO border on unethical. The Washington Post had an interesting article on this today.

The Internal Revenue Service said it may try to prevent tax preparers such as Jackson Hewitt Tax Service and H&R Block from offering customers refund loans and audit insurance because those products can encourage fraud.

You think? I shudder to think how much of the government’s money (ahem, MY money) is lost to people who get instant refunds or, worse, loans against refunds which turn out to be bogus. And that’s just the consumer fraud. How much potential fraud is there in the companies that do this? According to the article, it’s estimated that last year taxpayers paid over $1 billion in RAL fees to tax prep services. In some cases the interest rate is upwards of 100 percent. That is just unconscionable.

I love the quote from Jackson Hewitt’s CEO: “Jackson Hewitt firmly believes in the taxpayer’s right to control their tax return information through a written consent process” Translation: We’re abdicating all responsibility.

And from H&R Block, whose spokesman said that employees don’t get commission on RALs, therefore “there is no incentive for them other than serving taxpayers’ best interests.”

Uh-huh. Because paying triple digit interest rates to borrow money that would be yours in as little as 10 days is definitely in a person’s best interest.

I’m interested to see how this plays out. These tax shops have a lot of lobbyists out there, but in the end, the IRS tends to do what it darn well pleases.

Like most of us, I’m resigned to a winter (and possibly spring and beyond) of very little new TV. That’s OK, really. I don’t watch much “regular” TV, preferring the Food Network and TLC to most of network TV. And hey, this might be a good opportunity to spend more evenings at the gym rather than as a couch potato.

Nevertheless, I know it’s affecting a lot of lives. My thoughts on this issue intrigue me, because normally I think striking is just plain ridiculous in any form. It’s antagonistic at the very time that people ought to be trying to work together. It’s digging in your heels and saying, “so, how do you like THEM apples???” Furthermore, it adversely affects a lot of people who aren’t involved and want no part of the disagreement - as I have experienced on a very personal level as a passenger during several airline strikes. In this case, it’s all the non-writers who have anything to do with TV production. Sure, the actors (the stars, anyway) probably aren’t going to go hungry. But what about the set builders? The makeup people? The countless assistants and runners and helpers? Those people have families to feed and roofs to keep over their heads and they have to sit on their hands while the writers are making their point.

All that being said, I do have to say that I am more sympathetic to the writers’ point than just about any other group in recent memory who has decided to walk off the job. If they get paid when the networks air reruns on TV, they ought to similarly get paid when the networks make reruns available online or on DVD. So I’m in a quandry. I think striking stinks, but then again, I think the writers absolutely should get what they’re asking for.

I suspect they will cave, though. There are too many unscripted show opportunities these days. I don’t watch any “reality” TV (the looseness with which this term is used amuses me greatly) but there are enough of those shows out there to keep the networks afloat. Wonder what ideas they will come up with next? Amazing how necessity is the mother of invention.

Meanwhile, I’ll continue on with my Ace of Cakes and What Not to Wear.