The Annual Tax Return

Hurry Up and Wait

Timeline: April 7th:

With optimism I search through the filing cabinet. The top of the fridge is the second place I look. Next I rummage through every drawer in the house, and even resort to checking vehicle glove compartments, the bookcase, through all of my purses. No place is protected from my desperate, annual search. Receipts, W-2’s, 1099’s and dividends could be anywhere. Tax time, here we come again!

Timeline: April 8th

Now to organize my findings at last. Egads do I ever have a chore ahead of me!

I’ll make it simple though. Afterall, people from all walks of life do this every year, right? If they can, I can! It’s just a matter of piling all the papers in the same spot so I can put them into smaller piles to organize better. Right? H’yeah, right!

Timeline: April 10th

Two days pass while I weed through weeks of mail spread across my kitchen table and finally I have usable piling space on which to begin the organizing task.

Timeline: April 11th

Common sense dictates that a three-foot pile of various sizes of receipts is likely to tip over so I begin by placing my pile of accumulated paperwork very slowly and carefully onto the table. I’m extra careful because by this point I have only 5 days left to prepare my tax return, and I’m getting worried. There is no extra time to chase flying receipts all over the place!

At last I’m ready to look at each single scrap of paper. If it’s no longer important, I pitch it. That means, I do with it what I should’a done with it when I got it in the first place!

If the paper pertains to something having to do with money, it goes into the money pile. I have piles of bank statements, piles of mortage receipts, piles of W-2’s and other earnings statements. Money coming, money going, but mostly going it seems. Every category has its own personal pile waiting for sense to be made of them!

Organizing each pile in chronological order with January on the bottom and December on the top is the easy part. I then attempt to straighten out the pile of wrinkly papers using my arm as a rolling pin to flaten them out neatly. I then quickly staple or clip them together before the papers begin to roll back up.

Timeline: April 14th 6:00 a.m.

Now I’m ready … at least I feel ready. I now attempt to input all the information into my computer’s Tax Act program.

I start the pc. I wait, and I wait … The last person who shut down the pc didn’t do so correctly. Now my pc is running a scan disk to see if there are any file errors.

I wait … until I’m suddenly forced to make a decision. Deciding has nothing to do with my tax status. Windows advises that there is a file error and the dang computer wants … me … to decide whether or not to fix it! Like I care?!?! Like I’m smarter than the computer?? Sheesh! Besides, who cares about the past and the mistakes it creates?? Today is what is important! Okay, so today is second most important – my April 15th deadline is first …

Time feels palatable. I can almost see it melting away while the computer finally rectifies itself, and I get on with the business at hand!!

Timeline: April 14th, 11:30 p.m.

I’m dreary eyed. I’ve gone through half of a bottle of Tears, yet I can hardly see straight and my eyes still dry. All numbers now look the same to me.

The Tax Act program spits out little red error messages that say I can’t claim the kid over nineteen if he’s not a student. Dang! To my relief, it does notify me that I’m actually getting a tax refund!! Yahoo!! It pays to be single, and head of household afterall. Okay … at least at tax time it does.

Finishing the input of my tax infomation at last, I save the program and decide to call it quits for the night. I’ll get up early on the 15th and print out my return, hustle on down to the post office and get the stamps hand canceled and put this mess behind me!

Timeline: April 15th, 6:00 a.m.

Ahhhhhh, I can breathe a sigh of relief!! I’ve just discovered that I do NOT have to file my tax return for two more days! This year, Tax D-Day falls on a Saturday, which means the returns don’t have to be postmarked until the 17th!!

I go back to bed and sleep the entire weekend.

Timeline: April 17th, noon.

I finally drag myself out of bed. I’m hungry so I wander into the kitchen. I realize that I haven’t shopped for food for 17 days and there is nothing in the house to eat.

I go grocery shopping. I’m starving and don’t have time to cook any of the food I bought, so on the way home I stop at Arby’s for a quick pick-me-upper. I literally inhale the sandwich down on the trip home.

I feed and water the dogs.

It’s dinner time already. The kids are hungry so I cook dinner.

Timeline: April 17th, 6:30 p.m.

It’s time to print the tax return. Thank goodness the post office is open until midnight!

I turn on the pc and I wait. The last person to shut down the pc failed to do so correctly. I must again wait for the scan disk to take place. I wait. I wait some more. What’s the deal here?? Oh for crying out loud, the pc has locked up!!

I reboot.

I wait again. Since I failed to shut down the pc properly, now I must wait for the scan disk to take place. I wait some more. Finally … up comes my Windows desktop!! No errors this time!! Of course there were no errors … it was Windows’ fault that I had to reboot! Windows would never admit fault.

I open up the Tax Act program. I search for this year’s return. There it is! I select the return, send it to the print queue, and wait. I wait some more. No sound comes from the printer. Upon invesitagtion I determine that I forgot to turn the blasted printer on! Flipping its “on switch” I wonder what else can go wrong.

Maybe I shouldn’t have wondered. The printer still won’t print! Restarting the printer, I wait while it initializes. I restart my print process from the Tax Act program. I wait some more. I hear the printer making noise! I wait. I watch as form after form begins to inch their way through my printer. Confident, I wander into the kitchen to make another pot of coffee. A half hour later I return and the printer has just stopped as I reach down to grab all the forms. As I thumb through them I realize to my horror that I’m out of ink in my print cartridge. The paper is blank.

Timeline: April 17th, 8:45 p.m.

Risking a speeding ticket, I race to the office supply store. It closes at 9:00pm, and it’s 8:55 as I dash inside. I become disoriented … I can’t even remember the cartridge style number!

The courtesy desk allows me to use their phone.

“What else can go wrong?” I wonder while dialing my phone number … The line is busy. I try the second line. Crud … that line is busy too!!

“I shouldn’t have wondered,” I sigh out loud. I’m now in danger of becoming superstitious about the whole annual mess. Anyone with teenagers would have understood my predicament, so why do I suspect the IRS wouldn’t? IRS … understanding? I banish that thought.

An obviously agitated sales clerk wants to close the store while I plead for help at the last hour. I describe my printer. He says it sounds like I might have one of four different styles of printer cartridges and suggests that I come back in the morning with the empty cartridge. In desperation I buy all four.

Homeward bound at last. A cattle train stops. Dead in its tracks. Right in front of me. I wait.

Timeline: April 17th, 9:45 p.m.

Back home the telephone is still busy. I grit my teeth, flash my simulated smile and calmly request that my daughter and her friend to release the line … I need the pc line freed up so I can finish my tax return.

I turn on the pc. “Why am I apprehensive?” I ponder quizically. I wait. No noise comes from the pc. “Maybe someone unplugged it.” My mind desperately wants this whole mess to make sense and be over with, but it won’t and isn’t. I begin to think about the benefits of using H&R Block … Peering down at the cord I see that it is still plugged in to the socket but there are little gashes in the line as if my dog has eaten through the cord.

I begin to pAnIc as I do in all cRiSiS sItUaTiOnS …

Timeline: April 17th, 10:15 p.m.

“Maybe I can pull the plug from the kids’ pc to interchange with my pc. Maybe that will work. No, that won’t work,” I cry out loud. The cords are built in to the pc’s, I discover, as I wonder why I didn’t know that they aren’t removable, when I am the one who put all the pc’s together in the first place!

I begin a frantic search for a floppy disk. “Maybe I can copy my Tax Act program and print the return on my kids’ pc …”

I copy the program and install it on the kids’ pc. I select the tax file for sending to the print queue. I wait. Nothing is printing … I get an error message. My mind clears enough to remember that the kids don’t even have a printer! Running back to my office I yank the printer from my desk and back-track to the kids’ pc, plug everything in and flirting with a nervous breakdown I wait …

Timeline: April 17th, 11:20 p.m.

As I start the car, an automatic buzzer warns me that I’m low on gas, very low. I quickly point my car in the direction of the nearest gas station and hold my breathe as I coast up to the pump. My car radio reports long lines of last minute filers at the post office tax return check points. I put a couple of dollars worth of gas into the tank and head for the nearest check point 20 minutes away. I drive faster than usual and arrive at the end of a long line of cars wrapping clear around the block.

It’s 11:50 pm. My heart pounds and I feel short of breath. I won’t get credit for filing on time if, at midnight, I’m still out in the street and not inside the roped off area of this shopping center. I feel nauseous and light headed. The clock on my dashboard seems to race forward into time while my car barely inches forward in line.

Up ahead I see a smiling man approach the other drivers. He gives them each slip of paper. Ohmigosh – I bet it’s an IRS standard Form 1040 canned confession for all the late filers. Penalties galore! What percentage of my tax refund will they take?

The smiling man approaches me and I hold my breath as I stare blankly up at him. I accept the paper and dread reading it. The tension in my face begins to soften as I glance down at the paper he’s just handed me. The slip of paper is a receipt for filing on time! Yee-haw! Because the line is so long, the post office is issuing receipts to people still in the street. My heart stops pounding, the nausia subsides, and I wait …

It’s 12:45 a.m. when my car finally reaches the roped off area in the parking lot. Still more wait, but I’m … IN!

Timeline: April 18th, 2:05 a.m.

Home at last! Exhausted, and relieved beyond description, I slip off to bed, my burden is now behind me. I vow to never again be a last minute tax filer.

Next year, I’m going do things right. Next year I will not start my annual tax return project on April first because … I’m no April fool!

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