Saturday, March 26, 2016

Spring Rite



        

         My husband’s talking to himself again. I’m trying to give him a wide berth, not because his eyes are spiraling in odd directions – although that’s still a possibility – but because it’s tax season.

          As a couple who exemplify the adage of opposites attracting, whatever he’s doing over there with all those spread sheets of our past year is basically necromancy to me. Unsure if you’re using that semi-colon correctly? I’m your person, but keep your distance if you plan to talk about percentages.

          Years ago, we had a tax man, but every April he’d send us what he’d done, and my husband would inevitably check it over and then find something Mr. Tax had forgotten. That seemed a bit redundant, so we decided to keep the work in-house. Might as well get our money’s worth out of that MBA.


          I wonder if those long-gone relatives who left us bits of this and bobs of that ever would have guessed that their generosity would turn out to be a mixed blessing. We’re (well actually, he’s) dealing with not only the all-around fun of federal and Massachusetts taxes, but Oklahoma taxes. Conversation around here is peppered with “K-1”s and “503”s and I don’t know what all. 


There’s a gleam of light on the horizon, but there are still one or two more slowpoke documents to roll in and numbers to crunch.

So I’ll likely be hearing more of   “Give me a break! We owe $__________?!?  and I’ll begin wondering if there’s a nearby school system that might be interested in hiring a sexagenarian.

  An hour passes, and next will come, “Whoa Ho! Guess what I found! We only owe $ __!” and I’ll stop planning meals based on hamburger and pasta.



In the meantime, I’ll speak in soothing tones, since for a few more days if we were a comic strip, one corner of the house would read like $#@$!*.

10 comments:

  1. One nice thing about not having much means our taxes are really simple. We filed them electronically through AARP and got a small refund. :-)

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  2. It's happening here too, he's been working on the taxes and telling me not to make a sound. It almost done, thank God. And it' nice that we live in a state that doesn't much tax its seniors giving us huge exemptions.
    I do the check books, that's my contribution to our financial well being.

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  3. If you're paying income tax , you might not like it, but it means you are making a good living. Now what kind of a sentence did I just write?

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    1. Gotcha! Two kinds: The first is declarative, the second interrogative. Or maybe you were aiming for compound?

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  4. Sigh.
    They are both certain, but death is easier to understand than taxes.
    Love Calvin though.

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  5. Our tax system seems to be much more simple. Every year I'd fill out the form telling how much I'd earned, how much tax I'd paid and a few weeks later get a refund because on my earnings scale I was supposed to pay $xx and had actually paid $xxx, and that was that until next year.
    We don't pay 'added tax' on things we buy, it's all included in the price, what the tag reads, is what you pay.

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  6. I suppose around tax time it pays to have nothing but a teeny tiny house and two older model vehicles. Hey, I used a semi-colon just the other day in a post and wondered if I had used it correctly. :)

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  7. my husband does all that too and he always puts it off, we always file an extension and he manages to get it all together by October.

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  8. Ah, I am so glad I am old and poor and don't have to file anymore. Lucky you to have a live in tax guy---or maybe not:)

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  9. Oh Lord. I've been avoiding ours, but I need to buckle down and do them.

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