The Tax Man Cometh

Until this year, I thought people that complained about paying taxes were whiners. Part of this stems from the fact that my birthday is on tax day, so from an early age I got tired of people being grumpy on it, and also from the fact that I have never (foreshadowing: before now) had a problem with my taxes. My state and my federal usually cancel each other out--a not very exciting outcome, whereby I would only owe a little bit, or, like last year, receive a refund totaling $1.64.

But then I moved to Indiana. And had two different residences in New York state. And had jury duty. And got a scholarship, which hadn't had tax taken out. So when I started filling out my forms this year online, they started to get complicated. I couldn't figure it out, and neither could my income tax-genius mother, or the school's tax office, or financial aid. And, as we all know, the deadline is in less than a week. So I got up this morning and made it to the public library by 9 am, where they had AARP-related volunteers to provide free tax help, regardless of age or income. It was a wide variety of people who had lined up to fill out forms this morning--some community members and a lot of international students, which actually makes a lot of sense--if you're new to this country, you of course wouldn't know how to figure out our tax forms. There were four helpers, so we each got a number and then got called in. There were people with their elderly parents, an English kid who spoke French to a Creole woman in line, and the two students from Uzbekistan who were trying to figure out how to locate the right lines on their forms (I don't think they ever did figure that out. Oh, and they spoke French too!).

While I was waiting there for a few hours I ran through some articles and then found one of my favorite mysteries, part of a 4 book series which focused on four young barristers in London, narrated by a History Tutor at Oxford who is friends with them and visits them periodically (one small thing I love: you never find out if the Tutor, whose name is Hilary, is a man or a woman, although I would assume man). The protagonists, especially Julia Larwood, are always having battles with the Inland Revenue Service in England, and this particular passage struck a chord today:

"Julia's unhappy relationship with the Inland Revenue was due to her omission, during four years of modestly successful practice at the Bar, to pay any income tax. The truth is, I think, that she did not, in her heart of hearts, really believe in income tax. It was a subject which she had studied for examinations and on which she had therafter advised a number of clients: she naturally did not suppose, in these circumstances, that it had anything to do with real life.

The day had come on which the Revenue discovered her existence and reminded her of theirs. They had not initially asked her for money: they had first insisted, unreasonably but implacably, that she should submit accounts. They had shown by this that they were not motivated by a just and lawful desire to fill the public purse for the public benefit: their true purpose was to make Julia spend every evening for several months copying out the last four years' entries in her Clerk's Fee Book on an old typewriter that did not work properly. I myself am not entirely sure that the age and defectiveness of the typewriter were an essential feature of the Revenue's planning. But Julia was: every time it stuck, her bitterness towards them deepened. The Revenue, on receiving the result of her labours, had uttered no word of gratitude or commendation. They had demanded a large sum of money. More than she had. More, according to her--though I think that she cannot be quite right about his--than she had ever had. More than she could ever hope to have."
--Sarah Caudwell, Thus Was Adonis Murdered, 1981, p 11-12.

Moral of the story: The State of Indiana is demanding a large sum of money, as are the feds. More than I have. More than I have ever had. More than I could ever hope to have. Well, really, it's not that dire, if I'm honest. It's just certainly much more than I've ever had to pay before. Welcome to adulthood, I guess. And I'm not sure how taxes are distributed, though I suspect that quite a bit now goes to the military. I would be less grumpy if I could pick where my taxes went (hint: NPR, public schools, better reproductive health care.) And other than writing the checks (bummer) I am done for the year. So at least that's nice.