A Taxing Time

It’s income tax time again so that mean’s it’s time to have the passport handy and be ready to flee the country at a moment’s notice.

As a public service announcement (and a great way to work off 10 more hours of community service from my parole) I’m going to help you, the average American citizen, complete your taxes in a modern, efficient and even semi-legal manner.

Here’s the old way you used to fill out your income taxes every year:

You sit down on the evening of April 14th and you pull out the traditional tax form tools: two #2 pencils, a pencil sharpener, an extra eraser, a calculator, a ruler, a cup of coffee, a large carving knife, a fifth of Jack Daniels, a lighter, a carton of Marlboros, a gram of cocaine, and a loaded .45 automatic.

You sift through your various W-2’s and 1099’s and B-54’s, randomly scratching in numbers and banging on the calculator and sharpening the pencils with your knife until you get tired of the whole thing and call up Bernie, your smart-ass cousin who happens to work for H&R Block when he’s not drinking your beer and eating your chips and spilling both on your couch. Bernie comes over, drinks more of your beer and suspiciously fills out all your tax forms in 15 minutes, conveniently forgetting to sign his own name. Later that month the IRS Enforcement Agents kick in your door and and haul you off to tax prison while that schmuck Bernie visits your hot, young wife and tries to console her by taking off his shirt and suggesting they go “lie down” in the master bedroom.

While this method of doing your income taxes works, it can understandably be very stressful. The IRS understands this and wants to help by offering to come over and lie down in the master bedroom with your wife while you’re doing your taxes.

But the new way of doing taxes is much easier than the old way (especially on your wife). Rather than making taxes easier to complete, the IRS has decided to make them seem easier by forcing you use the one thing on this planet that is even more complex than the United States tax code: a computer.

Here’s the new way you’ll do your taxes:

You’ll sit down at your personal computer on April the 14th, play a couple games of solitaire just to “warm up”, put in your “Super-Duper Tax, Standard Edition” CD-ROM, double-click on the icon, choose a filename and path for the program, pick a directory location for your shortcut group, choose what sort of video and sound drivers your computers has, agree to some licensing thing which no one ever reads, wait while your computer loads the software, freezes half-way through, crashes your hard drive and bursts into pretty blue flames. You’ll panic and knock the computer on to the floor with your chair, only to have it set your drapes ablaze and spread the flames to your couch which will explode in a ball of fire due to all the dried beer stains.

As your house is burning down you’ll think about calling Bernie for help before you remember that he ran off with your wife while you were in prison last year. Don’t forget that the total destruction of your house means you’ll have to fill out IRS form 451 - Domicile Burnt To A Cinder which isn’t included on the “Super-Duper Tax, Standard Edition” CD-ROM. You’ll need to buy the “Premium” Edition for that.

Of course, if you had an Apple computer none of this would have ever happened because you wouldn’t have been able to find the tax software, or any software at all made later than 1998. But damn, it looks pretty it on your desk.

But don’t let me give you the impression that filing your income taxes on a computer is all bad.

First, computer tax programs notify you of changes in the tax law from year to year. For example, did you know that you are now required to send in a nude photo of yourself with your 1040 form? (No staples please!) I bet you also didn’t know that you can get cheap V1aggra from Cannada and that Your Account Is About to Be Disabledd. My computer told me this, so it must be true.

And using a computer is also a great way to hide any errors you may have made on your taxes. If you filled out your income taxes the old way and figured out that the IRS owed you 791 billion dollars, you’d figured that you made a mistake and you’d go back and try to correct it.

If, however, the computer tells you that the IRS owes you 791 billion dollars on your income taxes, you can happily send the form in, knowing that computers never, ever make mistakes. When those heavily armed special agents drive through your front window with their personal assault vehicle, you can just blame “that darn computer” for the goofy error and have a good laugh over it between the beatings.

Though, personally, I think you should blame Bernie.

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