I am working from home as a copyeditor because I can take a deduction for use of a home office and trying to keep my income below the taxable limit. I am also working part time as a math tutor and am tutoring a lot of kids for the SAT.
In previous years, I invested in IRAs and am nervous as I watch the stock market drop. There is a certain risk in pursuing this tax-reduction strategy and I have encountered it, obviously. I write this to make others aware that even legal tax resistance can have negative consequences.
I have often heard stay-at-home mothers say that they are not treated with much respect. Now that I am working from home, I have encountered this phenomenon, even though I don't have kids. I have a next-door neighbor who can't stand the fact that I don't go to some office. Ever since I began working from home, I am accosted by her, frequently in rude and intrusive ways, and asked about my employment. In the several years I have lived next to her, she has never once asked about my health, my family, and my hobbies. But she will stop her car on the street when she sees me walking my dog, roll down her window, and ask "Are you working?" One time, she was parked in her driveway as I came back to the house, rolled her window down, and actually yelled this question. She engages in this intrusive behavior every few months.
A few weeks ago, she asked again "What are you doing?"
"I am working from home as a copy editor." This was, of course, the an honest answer.
She was not satisfied. The very next day, she approached me and said "I thought you told me that when you did copyediting that you worked at your mom's house."
She said this in a way that suggested that she had caught me in an inconsistency and was *confronting* me with it.
She is a conservative Christian who supports Bush and the war. Hence I did not feel comfortable explaining that I was engaging in a political act
She has always been this way, even when I was teaching high school. One year, I had mono, a stomach virus, and four kidney infections with fevers. I would be weak and feverish, only outside because my dog was whining piteously, and have to account for my absence to her. She never once asked if there was anything she could do to help. She just wanted to know why I was home. She was more of a workplace attendance monitor than a neighbor.
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Before beginning war tax resistance, I had not thought about the *social* consequences of this. I had only thought about the economic ones. Yes, this is a minor consequence but an annoying one.
The second consequence is more economically serious. Several years ago, I think at the end of 2003 or the beginning of 2004, I started to have serious problems with my townhouse. A pantry wall that adjoins the outside of the house started molding badly. I called someone in to fix it. He looked outside and discovered that someone had put plaster in the pipe that carries condensation from the airconditioner to the outside. The water backed up into the pipe, the pipe leaked, and caused the wall to mold. I had to have the wall replaced. I thought I was done with this problem but it turns out that before the problem was corrected, the water damaged my air conditioner. The air conditioner leaked onto the hot water heater, which was ruined. The carpets were ruined from the leaking water also. A few months later, I had a lot of electrical problems--two computers stopped functioning, my dryer stopped working, my refrigerator died, the phone jacks stopped working. Apparently, this is from the water damage. I called an electrician who replaced a socket and I hope that part is done. The damage will cost thousands of dollars and because I live in FLorida, where the insurance industry has been devastated by claims resulting from 8 hurricanes in 2 years, I have had three insurance companies in the last 2 years and have no idea what will be covered.
I had always assumed that the damage was caused by an untrained but motivated worker hired by the home owner's association. I happened to mention this theory to a neighbor who had told me months before that he was *very* angry about antiwar bumper stickers on my car. The man got the oddest look on his face--a mixture of guilt and embarrassment. I can't prove anything but the look was unmistakeable. He knows a lot about air conditioning and he knows how much damage plugging a pipe would cause.
I want to emphasize that we had never discussed the war or had any disagreements about anything else.
The point of this is that sometimes there are unforeseen consequences to one's actions. Before considering political activity, think about the possibility of such things happening and ask yourself if the consequences are worth whatever will be gained by the action.