Okay, all you procrastinators, you've got until Thursday to pay The Man. Even with the country's bulging deficits, The Man needs cash to pay itself, fight wars abroad, fund commissions to get to the bottom of what happened two and half years ago, secure your freedom, and of course, keep your sorry ass in line.

According to Newsweek, all of Bush's tax cuts favor the extremely wealthy. The losers are those who get paychecks. Everyone with a salary, a steady paycheck, or just plain cash in hand gets screwed yet again. Even unemployment checks are taxed. Those who make money from dividends, estates, and the stock exchange get breaks. Corporations and businesses write off practically everything. It's the common man who takes it in the cake hole, and the rich get richer.

Trickle down economic is just plain stupid. Anyone who brings that concept up is either very wealthy or desperate to attain very wealthy status. If there's one thing I know about people with money, it's that they hoard it like Scrooge McDuck, and they always want more. If they throw the poorer masses a bone, they get more tax breaks while the rest pay taxes for the receiving the bone.

Strangely enough, I've been paying taxes of some sort since I was twelve. My folks employed me at their neighborhood bookstore. I used to think paying taxes was easy. I looked at how much I made, subtracted how much the company took out, and checked to see if it was more than what the government wanted from me. If it was, I got a refund. If it wasn't, I paid The Man.

I'm not a genius. I was born with a brass spoon that was tarnished before I could understand how to eat with it. I went to public schools and a state university. I've never made more than twenty thousand dollars in a year. I have no outstanding debts, leans or loans. I have one credit card (with a twenty-five thousand dollar credit limit. Crazy!). I don't own my home. I'm not running for office.

After seventeen years of paying taxes, I have a new plan. Pretty freaking simple, too. First off, everyone counts the same. Being single should be the same as a married person. No head of household, no penalty, no benefit. Right now, this means $4750 tax free, and it's justly doubled for married couples at $9500. Let's bump up this standard deduction to $6000 per person, shall we? I don't hear any complaints yet.

Exemptions are now worth $3050 if you make less than $104,625 (let's assume you do). Let's bump this up in a serious way to another $6000. This should satiate those heads of household as it makes every kid they have worth almost twice as much in tax free income. Basically, all Americans with one exemption (themselves) would get their first $12,000 of income each year tax free. Hey, that's a grand a month, isn't it? Anyone who makes less than 12 grand a year doesn't pay taxes. That takes care of pleasing the poor. Single folks are on equal footing with married folks and get a few more thousand tax free. Families get a significant increase of tax free money with each exemption. Everybody still happy? Good.

With all these swell changes, the difference has to be made up somewhere. I would like to propose a concept I've always assumed since I was a little kid. ALL INCOME IS EQUAL! It doesn't matter if you inherited it, won the lottery, got a steady pay check, collected unemployment or social security, scored in the stock market, or got paid with chickens. If you made money in 2003, it's your freaking income for that year. There should be no special benefits or punishment for how you made the money. If you make a lot of money one year, you will pay more in taxes. If you make less, you pay less. Yes, there's a bit of a sliding scale on the percentages depending on how much you make, but look at it this way: Most people would still rather be the one who pays 35% of their $5 million than the guy who pays 22% of his one hundred thousand, or even the gal paying 14% of her thirty thousand.

The rich are still the rich, the poor are still the poor, and the middle class still whine about how their taxes go to the programs they don't support. The system will work. We don't need tax cuts per se. We need a little more tax understanding. The burden of taxes shouldn't be on the those with salaries and paychecks. We don't need to focus helping middle class families or any specific group. Let's just give everyone a little more cushion from the get go and treat all income like it's the same kind of money.

Sound good? All right, now pay your taxes, and dream it was more like this.

Chris Jungle wrestles every year with the self employment tax.