The Tax Man Cometh

April 15th is looming and I'm already working myself into a tizzy just thinking about it. I start thinking of taxes, the I.R.S., and all the receipts and other bits of "evidence" I will be needing to present to our accountant until I work myself into a froth. And to those of you who do your own taxes – Are you insane? Or do you like living on the edge?

Now, before you say "Debi, you don't need any help," I know there are do-it-yourself websites and computer programs, but I'd be afraid we would end up either getting a $10,000 refund and have a lot of 'splaining to do or, worse, we'd end up owing $10,000. It's a lose-lose all the way around for us. I'm just not that organized or brave.

I put the word "evidence" in parenthesis because that is the way I think of all the bits and pieces of paper I carefully gather over the course of the year by stuffing them in my desk and hoping none of it will be lost before I dump the contents of a plastic grocery bag on our accountant's desk. Let her sort it all out.

This is the stressful way I start every year. Usually, around February 1st, I start worrying. Have I managed to keep track of all our allowable deductions for the last year? How much are we paying for health care, medications, cases of wine? (I have since found out that wine is NOT deductible. How unreasonable is that?)

Close to February 15th, it dawns on me that we now have only two more months to get our act together in order to avoid the Gray Bar hotel run by the government. I don't really think that would happen to us since the cost of keeping us locked up would far exceed what they can legally collect from us. (I hope.) There's not nearly enough time for a disorganized procrastinator like myself to get it altogether. This year I'm hoping that, after 48 years, I can get David to take over. (It's not likely to happen, but a girl can dream, can't she?)

By the time March 1st rolls around, I'm beginning to have bad dreams where I'm sitting in our accountant's office and she's disallowing every single deduction we've listed.

Our accountant (whom I'll refer to as Mrs. M. to hide her actual identity): Mrs. Harris, why are you trying to deduct $1,456.78 for pajamas, robes, house shoes, doughnuts, and twelve cases of wine? Isn't that a little excessive?

Me: Those things are so I can do my job.

Mrs. M.: Where do you work that allows you to work in pajamas and why are you buying doughnuts and wine?

Me: I work at home. Can I get a home office deduction? I've gotta have something on my stomach so I can concentrate, don't I?

Mrs. M.: Maybe and no. Why are you trying to deduct those items under "medical deductions?"

Me: How else am I going to have the strength to write my weekly column without those things? They keep my blood sugar up and my mind sharp. (Okay, maybe not sharp, per se, more like awake. Until the sugar crash hits.)

Mrs. M. (sighing deeply): You just can't, okay?

I catch Mrs. M. scanning the room and glancing at the door. I have a feeling she's trying to figure out a way to get us out the door.

By April Fool's Day, I'm in a full-blown panic and having nightmares of how I can decorate a 6'x8' cell. Gray walls are so depressing. Maybe I could call Martha Stewart for advice.

I figure if I haven't heard back from the I.R.S. by the middle of October, then we're home free for a couple of months until my nightmare of tax season starts over again. They've had six months to catch any errors that we may have made so it's their bad if anything's wrong. The tax codes read like they were written by a room full of primates. NOBODY understands them. That alone should be enough to get us off the hook for any miscalculations that may have occurred. Should any of you out there in taxpayer land get a nice letter from the I.R.S. inviting you to their office for an audit you might not want to follow my lead. If I knew what I was talking about I'd do my own.

Anyway, I sure hope they don't find any unintentional mistakes. I look horrible in horizontal stripes –like a really fat zebra.

And remember, when making out the check to the Internal Revenue Service, don't write "To the Money Sucking Government Drones" in the memo. They really hate that.