精美英文欣赏:税金（在线收听）

Tax is an inevitable feature of reality.Whether you are your own boss or working for someone else,there are always different taxes waiting to be paid.

税金是现实中一个无可避免的事。无论你是自己当老板还是为别人工作，总会有不同的况等着你去缴。

If you sell things,the government gets sales taxes.What complicates things is that every state is different,so price tags never include the taxes.Customers don't know exactly how much they have to pay,and discounts or price changes become hard to manage.

如果你卖东西，政府会抽消费税。复杂的是每一个州的税率各不相同，所以那些商品的标价都是不含税的。顾客无法知道他们要付的正确数目到底是多少钱，而折扣与价格的变动都变得难以管理。

When your money starts rolling in,you see that the calendar is closing in on April.That means the Internal Revenue Service(IRS)will be expecting your income taxes.Paying taxes isn't the worst part;what's annoying is that the forms have pages after pages of incomprehensible nonsense that only Harvard gradu-ates working in Washington DC understand.For the average person,his only option is to hire expensive accountants who punch numbers into calculators and help you do middle school arithmetic.

当你开始赚钱时，你就会看到四月快到了。那就意味著IRS（美国的国税局）在等着收受你的所得税。缴税还不是最糟的事；最讨厌的是那些表格都是一页页难以理解的东西，只有从哈佛大学毕业并在华盛顿DC工作的人才看得懂。对于普通人来说，他唯一的选择是花一堆的钱来雇一个会计师，请他把数字输入计算器，帮你做中学会就会做的算术。

Now let me remind you that your work is doubled because you do both federal and state taxes.There's no way out;whatever you do,the government will suck you dry.

现在让我提醒你，你需要做的是双份的数量，因为你有联邦税和州税两项的税务。这没有可逃避的出路，不论你做的是什么，政府都会把你榨干。