Tax Preparation

In an attempt to get some part of my life in order before leaving the country next week, I went in to have my taxes done earlier this week. I won't mention any names, but part of theirs is simply letters. Now having provided back up documentation well in advance, allowing for prior review and/or request for additional documents, I expected that this would be a straight forward and relatively quick process. As is so often the case in life, I could not have been more wrong. What I got was a process more reminiscent of hemorrhoid surgery without an anesthetic by a person whose only excuse for not being able to complete my return was that they had taken the class to bring them up to date with current tax preparation procedures.

Now I am not a terribly patient individual, and lack of preparation and incompetence by people that I am paying for a service can increase the level of that frustration by a factor of ten. (Frustration, by the way, was once defined as the mind over-riding the body's desire to choke the living shit out of some asshole who desperately deserves it.) Somehow however, I managed to restrain myself long enough to grab my paperwork off of this worker's desk, cram those documents (along with my spasming hands) into my pockets, and exit the building as quickly as possible; all the while mumbling under my breath about taxes in general and position of tax preparers on the Evolutionary scale in particular.

This left me with a curious dilemma however, half of the day was now gone and my taxes were still incomplete. Believing however that self-reliance and personal responsibility are the foundations of this country, I decided to take on this seemingly overwhelming task myself. To make a long story short, using the web-site of the same company that I had abandoned, and untrained as either an accountant or a tax preparer, I was able to complete both my Federal and State returns in less than 90 minutes starting from scratch. As for the city taxes that Toledo demands of me, the level of technology that this self-proclaimed "city of the future" is capable of dealing with forced me to pull out my abacus and slide ruler in order to calculate my taxes. Filling out the form required chiseling it into stone tablets. (I swear I felt like the Flintstones.)

My personal goal of tax preparation has been accomplished, but I think that the experience is emblematic of some of the problems in this country. The issues of taxation in general and the IRS in particular is something that we better think about taking on soon. It has become a runaway train and we are all standing on the tracks in front of it. Equally of concern should be the level of incompetence that passes for ability, or even expertise in the country. We need to expect, and even demand that we receive proper return for value given. This is life, and you don't get rewarded just for showing up.