It all seems so long ago. Frittering away happy hours at home
carrying out cheery tasks like laundry, spraying for ants,
scrubbing toilets.
It all seems so long ago.
Frittering away happy hours at home carrying out cheery tasks like laundry, spraying for ants, scrubbing toilets.
Now I watch hopelessly from my desk as people all around me whirl merrily past. Alas, I am not among them. Because I am engaged in a task that is so much bigger than me, a task that is my American birthright, a task that is threatening to send me around the bend…a task called “doing my taxes.”
Ordinarily, I find it amusing to be engaged in an abundance of “mini” careers. No nine-to-five for me, thank you very much. I love to “dabble” – it suits my independent spirit, my unstoppable curiosity, my aversion to math. Until tax time.
I have my spouse to thank for this. He completely loses his sense of humor and fusses over my procrastinating nature as he waves forms under my nose that defy comprehension.
“I need five copies of Form No. 007868798756, Revision R, but before you do that you need to finish Schedule PFQ, which you’ll find on the reverse side of the Business Form for Entrepreneurs Who Made No Revenue, Amendment C.”
“You know I’m not a math person,” I whine.
“This doesn’t involve math,” he retorts. “You just need to itemize your receipts and substantiate that your expenses can be reconciled with your income, then authenticate that the amount on your bottom line can be corroborated with the validation found on Form CYFZ , Amendment M of your return from last year.”
Huh? Well, at least it sounded something like that. And…Egads…the dreaded income and expenses exercise.
So the receipts and deposits and sundry scraps and bits of paper must be unearthed and hauled into the light of day and tallied onto other scraps and bits of paper – and oh, why does life have to be so hard?
“Where are your expense receipts from your trip to Sacramento last year?” he drills me after a few days of this. In journalism, we call this “piling on.”
“Well, they’re either in my priority folder or my important stuff box. Or possibly my vital matters drawer. I think.”
And soon I’m wading through menus from our 1998 Alaska Cruise, last summer’s movie ticket stubs, the leftover invitations to our wedding in 1974.
“Aha!” I cry exultantly. “Here’s the receipt for the shoes I bought to attend the seminar on aging!”
“Not deductible,” he bit back.
Well, you see what I’m up against.
Finally, I drag in a pile of paperwork and dump it unceremoniously onto his desk. But first, a few explanations are in order.
“OK, I know this receipt from Wal-Mart may have a couple of things that could be questionable from the IRS standpoint,” I admit.
“Like the Snickers Bar?” he snorts.
“Well, yes, but you see over here on the income side? I included the check Aunt Mavis sent me for my birthday and the $7.89 I got when I returned the lint brush to Target. I figure it all comes out in the wash.”
“I don’t think that’s quite how the IRS figures it,” he replies dryly. “You might want to go take another whack at that.”
So you see, not being a math person is a real drawback at tax time. The way I look at it, we should all just try to get along. Because if everybody goes all tit-for-tat about it, where’s the opportunity for creative thinking, free expression and good will toward man?
By the way, if you are reading this column and work for our friends at the IRS, I’d like to take this opportunity to confess that my real name is Hillary Clinton.
