I Forgot to File My Taxes Because I Was Too Busy Being Poor

A Brief and Infuriating History of How a Temporary War Tax Became Permanent Debt Slavery

If I had actually filed my taxes this year, I’d be saying the same damn thing.

I am writing this from a motel room that charges by the week and has a shower drain that makes noises I am choosing not to investigate. I have a graphic designer and an editor who rely on me to pay their wages out of The Wise Wolf’s earnings, which one commenter recently estimated at “a million dollars a month” based on the fact that we have 67,000 subscribers. Sir. MOST of those are free subscribers. The paid tier generates enough to keep three people alive in the technical sense of the word. We are not swimming in money. We are doggy-paddling in a bathtub with a slow leak. And I forgot to file my taxes.

Not because I’m lazy. Not because I’m making some kind of sovereign citizen statement. Because I have been working eighteen-hour days trying to keep this publication alive, and the IRS filing deadline snuck up on me like a parking ticket on a car I can’t afford. I am not good with money. I live in a motel. That should tell you everything you need to know about my financial acumen. I can tell you which tech stocks are going to go up because I understand the products they make and where the industry is headed. That’s a gift. Accounting is NOT a gift. Accounting is Babylonian money magick and I am a Christian and those two things do not mix.

But here’s the thing about tax season that NOBODY ever brings up, and I want you to sit with this for a second because it might ruin your entire week.

The federal income tax was not supposed to be permanent.

It was introduced in 1913 (the 16th Amendment, for those of you keeping score at home) and then MASSIVELY expanded in 1917 to fund World War One. It was sold to the American public as a temporary wartime measure. Temporary. As in “we need this to beat the Kaiser and then we’ll give it back.” World War One ended in 1918. It is now 2026. The Kaiser has been dead for over a hundred years. And you are STILL paying a “temporary” war tax every single April because the people in power realized that once you start milking a cow it’s stupid to ever stop, especially when the cow keeps showing up at the barn on time every morning.

Your great-grandparents were in diapers when this con started. It has not stopped since. It will not stop. Nobody in Washington has any intention of stopping it because that money is the engine that runs every racket, kickback, and shell game on both sides of the aisle.

And speaking of both sides.

For my Republican readers who are sick of hearing me trash your guy: your tax money is absolutely funding things that should make your blood boil. Welfare fraud is real. Daycare center scams are real. There are people gaming the system on a scale that would make a Vegas card counter blush, and a significant chunk of that abuse is being committed by people who aren’t supposed to be in the country in the first place. I am not being sarcastic. I am not mocking you. You are correct about this and the Democrats who pretend it isn’t happening are lying to your face.

For my Democrat readers who are sick of hearing me trash your guy (whoever your guy even is at this point): your tax money is going to defense contractors who bill the government ten thousand dollars for a screwdriver and fifteen thousand for a toilet seat and nobody audits it because the contractor’s CEO golfs with the guy who approves the contracts. Your money is subsidizing billionaires through shell corporations that exist for no reason other than to vacuum cash out of the Treasury and deposit it into offshore accounts that are legally invisible. You are also correct and the Republicans who pretend this isn’t happening are lying to YOUR face.

Both of you are right. Both of you are getting robbed. And BOTH of you can agree on this one: we need to stop sending money to Israel.

They are not the 51st state. We are not their army. We are not their piggy bank. We are not obligated by any rational interpretation of American interests to bankroll a foreign government to the tune of billions every single year while Americans sleep in motel rooms and skip dental surgery because they can’t afford the copay. (That last one is me, by the way. I need over ten grand in dental work. The Wise Wolf is literally falling apart at the mouth.)

And it gets worse when you pull the thread on HOW this whole system got built. The Federal Reserve, which controls the money supply that the IRS collects on behalf of, was designed in secret on Jekyll Island in 1910 by a handful of bankers including representatives of the Rothschild banking dynasty, the Warburgs, and J.P. Morgan’s people. This is not a conspiracy theory. This is documented history. The meeting happened. The names are on record. They designed a central banking system that would allow private bankers to loan money to the United States government at interest, which the government would then repay using YOUR taxes. You are not paying taxes to fund America. You are paying interest on loans that private bankers made to the government on your behalf without asking you.

You are funding your own yoke. Your great-grandparents funded it. Your grandparents funded it. Your parents funded it. And unless something changes, your kids will fund it too.

How’s it feel to be a slave, my fellow Americans? Because I don’t know about you, but I’m sick of it. I am sick of working myself into the ground in a motel room with blistered fingers and busted teeth so that I can send a chunk of what little I earn to a government that will use it to buy overpriced screwdrivers and fund a foreign government’s military while telling me I should be grateful for the PRIVILEGE of participating in a system that was rigged before my grandmother was born.

Happy tax season.

Help keep the Wise Wolf howling.

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Now here’s the part where I beg. I need to have my teeth fixed and I probably will need a tax attorney. I genuinely have no idea what I’m doing with this stuff and the penalty for getting it wrong is apparently federal prison, which seems like a disproportionate response to a guy who lives in a motel and forgot a deadline because he was too busy writing articles that piss off both parties equally. A paid subscription is less than five dollars a month. That money goes directly to keeping this operation running, paying Lily so she can afford a car before she graduates, and hopefully hiring someone who understands the tax code well enough to keep me out of an orange jumpsuit. I might be good at figuring out which direction tech stocks are headed but when it comes to my own finances I am quite literally the dumbest smart person you will ever meet and I need professional help before Uncle Sam decides to make an example out of a broke journalist who was too busy exposing corruption to remember April 15th.

If you cannot afford to upgrade to paid (it is tax day after all) - you can still share this article and remind someone else why we are all miserable on April 15th every year.