Tax time

So, did you get your tax forms mailed in time? Did it take you longer than the estimated time listed on the forms? With five percent of the people paying about 50 percent of what it takes to run our country, the rest of us sure do a lot of scurrying around tax time.

I remember a time people said we’d be ahead having a professional prepare our taxes. We’d heard all those glowing commercials about how much we’d likely overlooked doing it ourselves. Besides, we’d moved and bought our first house. So we went professional.

I got kind of enthused about the money we’d be getting back. We’d moved from a two-story 10-room house in Indiana to our “starter” home in Texas. It was a one level “ranch” without any thought of “ranch.” Our bedrooms were small, but so were our kids. Our living room was small, as was our dining room and kitchen. The “extravagance” was that we had two bathrooms. Half of one became my husband’s office. It wasn’t that the bathroom was big enough to be an office; it was just that there really wasn’t another place to prepare lessons for his high school students. He put a collapsible table on the bedroom side of the door and a chair in the bathroom, and studied that way.

It was easy to decide how we’d spend our huge refund. We could at least remodel our garage into a playroom/office. Maybe add on a room. I was excited about going to the tax guy.

We sat there answering a lot more questions than we’d ever thought of on our own. Each “yes” brought out another form. I was so thankful we’d not tried this on our own.

“Okay,” said the tax guy shuffling forms, “It looks like you owe about $250” or some such amount.

“Well, see, each form costs x amount, and you had quite a few forms…”

As we sank into our chairs discrediting those who gave us advice, he said, “Wait a minute, let’s see..” and he began refiguring.

In the end, as we were preparing to sign for a modest refund, my husband, who knew my remodeling dreams were dashed, said, “We can’t do the whole room like we wanted, but maybe we could at least buy a doorknob.”

Another year professionals didn’t get the forms to us until April 15. I sat in the long line of cars at Austin’s post office, waiting to get taxes postmarked before midnight.

The next day our envelope was in our mailbox. Insufficient postage.

We’ve used professionals another time or two. But regardless, when we’re signing the forms my good man almost ritualistically says what he’s said most Aprils of our marriage, “You know what Ben Franklin said, ‘If we don’t hang together, we’ll hang separately.”