We have ourselves a ghost-like minion, who treads invisibly amidst popular culture. Indeed, his very code name is Ghost, although it turns out that’s a ridiculous coincidence.

Dread Lord,

I humbly present this to your glorious radiance.

As requested, I have been monitoring the communiqués between my various cohorts, and this appears to be a surprisingly good way to irritate the crap out of someone who is required to do their job, similar to keeping telemarketers on the phone at dinner time.

Ghost

The Czar gets phone calls from his congressman from time to time, and the Czar is usually fifteen seconds into hollering at him before we realize it is a recorded message. This seems like adequate payback.

Meanwhile, N or S an operative who helps us move our money around. Imagine his difficulty, moving Roman denarii into kopecks and back into wampum to avoid double taxation every time we want to buy a pack of pencils. But the S of N or S is a certifiable public accontant and has a very important piece of information to share about our previous essay about the food workers’s union shutting down a Chicago icon:

A little something that is usually overlooked regarding union dues.

Union dues are one of those things that “may be deductible.” That is, the portion of the dues that exceed 2% of the employees adjusted gross income is deductible if they have enough other deductions to itemize. That happens fairly rarely, at least in the 400 or so tax returns I prepare each year.

So, the average UFCW employee there pays $209.29 in union dues plus another $30 in federal income tax on the union dues plus $10 to the state of Illinois on those same dues. Such a deal.

If the wage difference between union and non-union is eaten up by the dues than the union worker is actually in the hole once the tax men takes their bite.

Union employers have similar, uncounted, costs on those same dues that customers have to pay to cover. The hole deepens.

Wow, but of course you are right. The Czar obviously didn’t even think that the union grocery clerk’s paycheck is likely taxed before union dues are cut out, meaning—exactly as you said it—the union worker winds up paying tax on money he or she won’t actually get. See, this is why you handle such a large portion of our loot.

By the way, minions: if you want a brilliant accountant who can save you serious amounts of cash, definitely consider hiring the S of N or S, who works out of an undisclosed location and is utterly incommunicado for his safety. You can’t go wrong.

See how smart these readers are? Where’s your email or letter? Come on! Write in.

The Czar of Muscovy

Божію Поспѣшествующею Милостію Мы, Дима Грозный Императоръ и Самодержецъ Всероссiйскiй, цѣсарь Московскiй. The Czar was born in the steppes of Russia in 1267, and was cheated out of total control of all Russia upon the death of Boris Mikhailovich, who replaced Alexander Yaroslav Nevsky in 1263. However, in 1283, our Czar was passed over due to a clerical error and the rule of all Russia went to his second cousin Daniil (Даниил Александрович), whom Czar still resents. As a half-hearted apology, the Czar was awarded control over Muscovy, inconveniently located 5,000 miles away just outside Chicago. He now spends his time seething about this and writing about other stuff that bothers him.