Taxes & sodomy a tale from downunder.. Uncle Sam's waist.

Let me start by say in I that I love being married. everyone should be so lucky as me. I genuinely enjoy contemplating the rest of my life with the person I love most on this planet. What I want to know is why good old uncle Sam seems to be so dammed jealous of our happiness. Stephanie and I just got done paying a shit load of dough to IRS and Franchise tax board of California. I am OK with taxes in general, and will pay my fair share. But the way they make you go about paying your taxes is just painful. We are still skirting under the evil AMT thank God. But after we got hitched they(being the man that is) started screwing with our with holdings. So this weekend instead of just paying a little more (in Stephanie's case) or getting a little back(in my case) we ended up having to pay as much as was already with held from us. That was a really painful check we had to write. To rub salt in the wound California wants to charge us $70.00 because the amount out standing this year was more than 20% greater than what we owed last year on April 15th. Our income didn't change but our marital status which for some reason affects how much money they steal out of our paychecks, by their rules not ours. Somehow this puts us in the wrong and gives them the opportunity to fine us for something other stupid reason. Ughh! well enough about that. I am actually feeling less angry today about it than yesterday when I spent five hours trying to figure out why our tax bill was about 15 times greater this year than last. Nothing like a couple bottles of wine to ease the pain of Uncle Sam's diamond encrusted fist rooting around for all your loose change in your descending colon. The bottles, fortunately had been bought before we knew how much cash we had to pony up. It would otherwise have been tap water and tears. The last thought I had before nodding off from a fuzzy wine buzz was if it is this bad next April 15th then we may decide that Australia really does rock and never go back to the US. OOh OOh I just had another thought. Or we tell everyone we know in the US if they ever want to see Stephanie again (because lets face it, she's the draw, I just carry the luggage) they have to pay Uncles Sam's ransom to let us back into the country. Wish I had thought of that one a couple of days ago. Oh well next year.