Taxes

I just finished my tax returns. I need now only walk them to the mailbox. Yes, mailbox. I still take a certain pleasure in filling out hard copies and mailing them -- physically -- to the powers that be.

Although my income is modest, and the amount of money the government is able to extract from me isn't that much, the number of forms that I have to fill out each year to document the process is impressive. My income may not be all that much, but it comes in bits and pieces, each bit and piece requiring a different set of forms. Thirteen pages of forms this year, in fact.

Why does it have to be so complicated? Each session of Congress considers proposals for a simplified form of taxation, taxation so simple that it would require only a simple return. Some such proposals favor the rich, some make an attempt to be fair to all. But none ever comes close to passing.

Which, perversely, is fine with me. My shameful little secret? I actually like doing my taxes each year. Reading the byzantine instructions, cross-referencing the line numbers from form to form, locating and using the intricate work sheets -- it's all a kind of puzzle, the sort of puzzle I loved even as a kid. This year, for the first time, the government was too cheap to mail out the instructions. I have to admit being somewhat irritated at having to scroll up and down through the on-line version, printing out the more incredibly complex parts of the puzzle for my prolonged contemplation. But all in all, as long as it's only once a year, I enjoy it.

I save copies of my returns as a record. All of them. Not just for the seven years most advisers suggest. Forever. My journals and blogs are records of my life's thoughts, dreams, travels, ideas. My tax returns are records of my finances. I find all aspects of my life's history to be utterly fascinating, beyond belief. It's all good.

Although I don't file my returns on-line, I did type them on-line this year before printing the forms out and mailing them in. A concession to the times. And -- I have to admit -- they looked a lot snazzier than my hand-written returns of past years. After all, I don't write my blog out in longhand, right?

You see, I'm no luddite. Just a mite eccentric.