Otus the Head Cat PAGE 2D
Tax procrastinators get extra three days.
Welcome to tax day. Only it isn’t. Not this year.
I’ve gotten a dozen emails from confused readers asking about exactly when the deadline is this year to send in your taxes.
It’s normally April 15, but today is a Saturday, and Sunday is the District of Columbia’s holiday of Emancipation Day (celebrated Monday). So, this year procrastinating citizens have until Tuesday to mail in those forms without the confiscatory wrath of the IRS falling on their heads.
Procrastinators make up a hefty chunk. The IRS says about one-third of Americans wait until the last minute to file their federal taxes. The early birds are probably the 73 percent who got an annual refund (average around $2,800). They included Owner for a number of years.
That was back in the idyllic days of simple one-source incomes. Owner made X amount of money, he looked at the list in the back of the 1040, found what he owed, noted how much had been deducted and applied for the difference. A small refund was usually the result.
Nonetheless, the onset of tax time brought bouts of paralyzing panic and depression to the house. The first weekend in March was when Owner finally steeled his nerves, gathered a fist full of No. 2 pencils and set about to fill out his federal and state income taxes.
In those pre-Turbo Tax years, it usually took Owner a couple of days. The IRS estimates it takes 22 hours for the average taxpayer to complete a Form 1040. Even the simplified 1040EZ takes seven hours.
But in his hubris, Owner considered himself above average. After all, he had been to graduate school and although his degree was in English, that ought to enable him to decipher the simple language on tax forms. Right?
During my corporeal embodiment, I was a calming influence on Owner in this time of duress. I’d curl up on top of the receipt-laden dining table and go to sleep while he sank deeper into the miasma of despair that surrounded the 1040s, Schedules A and B, W-2s and 1099s.
Then there came the year that, due to a clerical error, Owner had neglected to have enough withheld from his biweekly paychecks and ended up owing the IRS money. It wasn’t much, but it spooked him for life.
For years afterward, Owner approached tax time assuming he’d be saddled with having to fork over a disproportionate chunk of the national debt. He’d spend days studying the instruction manual.
It contained baffling information such as: “The House of Representatives has passed technical corrections legislation (H.R. 2645) affecting, among other things, the taxability of distributions from Roth IRAs. Prototype sponsors may wish to consider maintaining, or encouraging individuals to maintain, qualified rollover contributions (described in section 408A(e)) in separate Roth IRAs from Roth IRAs containing regular Roth IRA contributions (described in section 408A(c)(2)).”
Say what? Whenever he got stuck, Owner simply visited the official friendly IRS site at irs.gov.
This is a happy place, a comfortable place, where they says things like, “When you’re armed with the correct instructions, the right forms and all the pertinent publications, your filing problems will be a lot less taxing.”
“Less taxing.” Get it? It’s refreshing to find the IRS has a sense of humor. That comes in handy once you discover there are 2,086 files you can download to help you with your taxes. These include stuff like: Form 8896 (Low Sulfur Diesel Fuel Production Credit); Form 12508 (Questionnaire for Non-Requesting Spouse); and Form 14708 (Streamlined Domestic Penalty Reconsideration Request Related to Canadian Retirement Plans).
Finally, the most important key to Owner’s newfound inner peace is that about 10 years ago he seriously messed up some of the multiple forms required to be filed with his relatively modest stock market investments. The result was an eye-popping tax-owed bill that sent him screaming to a certified public accountant, who got it all sorted out.
Owner’s friendly tax-prep professionals have been sorting it all out ever since for a reasonable fee — proof that an English degree may be good for lots of things, but not figuring out your taxes.
Until next time, Kalaka reminds you to file by Tuesday or apply for an extension.
Disclaimer
Fayetteville-born Otus the Head Cat’s award-winning column of Z humorous fabrication X appears every Saturday. E-mail: mstorey@arkansasonline.com