I’m considering a name change to Dingbat, which fits me best during tax season. Every year I promise myself to keep a better accounting of all my financial records, and every year I end up adding, “Damn it, this time I mean it!”

I thought it would be easier when I got myself a tax preparer, but it’s sort of like hiring yourself a babysitter; sure, you no longer have to cook or clean up after yourself—and someone else can get those cookies and that juice box for you from the highest shelf—but now, you have to go to bed when she tells you to, and if you misbehave, then you get no TV for the rest of the night.

With a tax preparer, you never need to add two and two to make two-and-four-fifths (since, you know, the IRS takes about 30% of whatever total you earned). No, the tax preparer can make those calculations for you himself because that’s what he does for a living, telling you, “I’m sorry, but you made quite a lot less than you thought you did, and not only that but you owe the tax man all the money that you’ve been saving to buy a replacement for that hand-me-down dinosaur of a computer you’ve been using since the last century.” Is that all, really? All forty-two cents of my life savings? That’s such a load off my shoulders!

See? All worries about incorrect calculations are completely eliminated. Now all you have to worry about is organizing all the numbers required to make the magic happen.

Right. Well, I moved twice this year, if you’ll remember; my numbers are all over the place. Are they in this box? Nope. Hmm… that box? Nope. This one? Damn it. That one? Crap! Crap-crap-crap!

It doesn’t help either when one of your past clients sends you two different sets of 1099 forms with two different numbers, where there should be only one set of forms and one number. Of course, being the dingbat that you are, you don’t discover this until you’re at your incredibly patient and good-natured tax preparer’s desk, so your taxes will have to wait while you sort this out with your client, and of course, it takes you a full week to get the issue resolved. In other words, you better get the correct numbers from your client—who loves to play phone tag—or you don’t get to watch TV tonight!

You? Your? Who am I kidding? No one would be as badly blessed and as flaky as I. Such a thing could happen only in my Murphy-driven life, so why bother with the second person pronoun?

Why, indeed. The tax man cometh, and he taketh away from the person with the least to giveth. That would be me.

So if I’m a little slow in responding to e-mail, comments, postal mail, and sexually perverted telepathic messages, you know why: I’m busy digging my way to China through all these boxes, trying to get organized again because I promised myself that I’ll do better next year.

And damn it, this time I mean it!

Share this post: