I’m posting this video partly for the rare glimpse inside the California Franchise Tax Board.  Can somebody who works at FTB help me to understand what all those aqua colored contraptions are for?  It looks like they may be used to sort mail, but for all I know, they are the machines that actually assist in processing our state returns.

The actual story reported in this video clip is that more and more Californians are not paying their taxes and that this impacts all residents of the state either directly or indirectly.  The tax gap in California has nearly doubled in the past few years, according to the report.  Jerome Horton, spokesperson for FTB, is quoted saying that the state sees people who fail to pay their taxes as criminals.  The report naively lumps honest taxpayers with unpaid tax debt into the same category as tax evaders.  I would like to say that this the reporter’s error, but it definitely appears that Horton shares this view.