Jason’s eyes narrowed, his hand only inches from his gun. He’d made a possibly fatal mistake, unless he could recover by distracting his arch-nemesis Rock Steele.
It would be tough. They’d both been trained by the absolute best secret intelligence services, once brothers in arms. They both knew each others’ mind tricks backwards and forwards.
“Any last words?” Rock yelled, shouting over the roar of the helicopter above them. Rock was holding the rope ladder that it had let down with one hand and his gun was trained on Jason with the other.
Jason paused, and then shouted back, “Did you know that the national average wage index went up?”
“What?” shouted Rock.
“The national wage index went up!” Jason shouted as loudly as he could. “You know, what they use to calculate the social security wage base, which is amount of income subject to social security taxes? When the index goes up, the wage base does too, and more of your income is taxable.”
“What does this have to do with us, Jason?” Rock demanded from him.
“Well, it means that after you take the bearer bonds and go into hiding, you’ll need to pay 12.4% portion of the self-employment tax on more of your income!”
Rock paused, his gun wavering as he considered what Jason had told him. “What about the 2.9% Medicare portion of the self-employment tax? What happens to that?”
“The Medicare tax of 2.9% is assessed on all net income,” Jason replied, his hand slowly inching down to the knife tucked into his belt. “It isn’t affected! Nor is the 0.9% Additional Medicare tax that applies to compensation in excess of $200,000! Or 250,000 after you marry your deadly fiancé Bianca!”
“The social security eligible amount was $118,500 in 2016,” Rock called out. “What is it up to now?”
“In 2017,” Jason shouted, “the wage base will be $127,200! It will increase the total amount that we pay, even if the overall rate of 15.3% remains unchanged!”
Rock roared, “We pay? I think that you mean that I pay, Jason!” He tilted his head back to laugh, and for just a moment his gun hand waivered away from Jason.
In one fluid motion Jason drew his knife and threw it, his aim deadly true. It hit Rock in the shoulder with a *thunk* and a spurt of crimson blood spattered across the ground. Rock tried to fire, but with the knife in his shoulder the shots went wide. Jason grabbed his gun and dove to the side, firing! He’d made it! If Rock had only paid more attention to his raised self-employment taxes for 2017, he might not have been distracted by Jason’s gambit . . . and he might still be alive.
The world would be safe for another year, thanks to careful financial planning advice from Tardy & Co., PC.
Tags: weirdly funny