Yours portly has spent the last two nights laboring over income tax returns for Dr. Wife and myself. My taxes are always a bit unusual because I have so many side hustles (and 1099s as a result), but getting married in late 2025 changed quite a bit. Apparently, the State of South Carolina treats all income reported on the federal tax return as income due to the State, but you can claw it back to avoid double taxation (which is unconstitutional) by pulling the AGI from another State’s return (in this case, Dr. Wife’s earnings were entirely in North Carolina). I was shocked to learn that North Carolina has a lower State income tax than South Carolina, especially as we’re the allegedly more conservative of the two Carolinas. Yeesh!
Quick note: do not take any of the above as financial or tax advice. I’m not even sure if I’m explaining all of that correctly (to my younger brother: don’t panic—I did everything by the book, I just can’t remember every little exact detail at the time of writing, and don’t feel like looking it all up again, but I did it correctly).
As per usual, filling out tax forms reminds me of how much I despise the income tax, in part because it demands that we reveal so much of ourselves to the federal government. Like with so many things, though, we reveal intimate details about our lives—like how big our home office is—so we can grasp onto a few more of our own dollars. At this point, we should do away with all deductions and just charge everyone a flat 5% of their income—or, better yet, abolish the income tax and shift to a flat national sales tax. It’s way easier to control my spending than to try to calculate what percentage of my cell phone usage was for business purposes.
It’s also frustrating to hustle and scrimp and save all year, only to be punished for it come tax day (and, yes, I should start paying taxes quarterly—that’s coming under the new Dr. Wife/Portly regime).
