Bourgeois in that if this is the worst inconvenience you have, then you are, in the words of my late and dear friend John Henry Faulk, "choppin' tall cotton."
My younger daughter taught me that if you keep track of the sales tax you actually pay in Texas, it will always exceed the standard deduction for sales tax based on your income.
(This was not an issue in Indiana, where the tax to deduct from the federal return was the income tax--a far superior method of taxation in my opinion.)
Anyway, I go into a restaurant and eat. They bring me a bill that states what I ordered and the amount of the tax.
I give them my credit card.
When it comes back, the receipt with the tax amount on it is gone and all I have is the credit card receipt with the total amount paid and a blank for the tip.
DIGRESSION: I try not to put tips on credit cards because of some very high profile ripping off of waitstaff by fairly well known chains. Not giving them the money is direct theft, but there are other nasty practices like deducting the processing fee for the credit card company from the tip amount rather than the tab. So I always tip in cash if I have it on me.So I have to ask for them to bring the other receipt back.
I do not understand this.
If you don't itemize deductions, you don't need either receipt for anything. But if you do, you need to prove the amount of sales tax you paid.
Maybe if I ever got my home paid for, I would not be itemizing deductions...but I've not yet had the pleasure of burning a mortgage, so I do need to keep track of my sales taxes.
It's not as easy as it sounds, but it pays off on April 15, so I do it.
I would appreciate a little more help from restaurants.
Yes, I know things have come a long way from the days of places that refused to serve blacks or (as they put it) "Mexicans" or Indians, so the quality of my problems has vastly improved.
But in light of the SCOTUS pulling the teeth of the Voting Rights Act and the Indian Child Welfare Act on White Power Day, June 25, 2013, I wonder if the public accommodations clause of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 will be next?
All that is required is a method of framing it that appears to disadvantage white people, and it's a goner.