Is it taxes or medieval sorcery?
By Jay Jamison
I do not like filling out forms. I tend to start writing like I always do, only to discover that “address” on some forms means only the street address, and the next line calls for the city. But I’ve already written down the street address and the city all on the one line. This elicits from me a series of remarks I cannot express here, so I leave that to your imagination.
When doing this online, the state designation is often a pull-down menu of state names, which you scroll through until Illinois appears. Some forms have individual boxes for each letter and number, which makes filling out the form even more irritating. Whenever I am given a form to fill out, I often scan the original on my printer/copier to make a practice copy. All of this takes time and wastes paper and printer ink.
My mind wanders back to the Genesis creation story when I contemplate dealing with applications and official forms. “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form(s)” … OK, so I made “form” plural, but this is my daydream — so, there. Consider a world with no forms to be filled out; now that’s my kind of paradise.
Recently I applied for a new passport. I was given a packet of forms and instructions from the very helpful lady in the Morgan County Circuit Clerk’s Office. She gave me two of the application forms, warning me that if I make a mistake and tried to erase or cross out any entry, the whole thing will be rejected by the State Department (gulp). At home I made an additional copy of the application form and laid it on my desk. There it laid for several days as I invented reasons for not filling it out — the rugs need shampooing, I need shampooing, time to re-read Hegel’s “The Phenomenology of Spirit” — anything to delay the possible nightmare of filling out an official government application, where one mistake could mean ruin.
So, you can imagine my attitude towards filing my income taxes. I absolutely detest dealing with these forms. Everyone knows that the tax code is massive and largely indecipherable. It is the paper equivalent of medieval alchemy. Like the required incantation and potion recipe to bring about the hoped-for outcome of medieval sorcery, the tax code is definitely written in code, enough to frustrate mere citizens, like me. Get one line wrong or submit the wrong schedule or form, and it could mean disaster.
That’s why so many tax preparers annually pay to attend what’s commonly known as tax school, where they learn the latest paginated incantations for successful tax filing. You see, we haven’t really advanced much since those early days when witches devised their spells over the boiling caldrons intoning, “Eye of newt and toe of frog, wool of bat and tongue of dog.” Get the incantation wrong, and it could mean disaster.
So, I go to the professionals to prepare my returns, in a manner as I would have if I had lived 300 years ago, trying to avoid the curse of the evil eye. April 15, tax day, is right around the corner. So, for those who have yet to file, let us begin: Eye of Form 1040 (line 24b), toe of adjusted income and Schedule C … enjoy.
