Tax time as recreation

Passive activity income does not include the following.
**Income from an activity that is not a passive activity.
--IRS instructions for Form 8582

Devoted readers of this publication may find it hard it to believe that its suave and erudite author once dabbled in the mystic arts of higher math -- joyfully dirtying his hands with complex variables, double and triple integrals, Laplace transforms and Euler functions.

Nothing remains of this arcane knowledge, alas -- merely memories of terms -- but my early fascination with numbers may help explain something about me today:  to wit, the reason I do my own taxes and actually enjoy it.

I would never give my finances to H&R Block, let alone to a more sophisticated CPA.  Not just because I'm too cheap -- as indeed I am -- but because I myself enjoy untangling the cunning little webs that the IRS weaves throughout its volumes of forms and publications, all designed to "help" us through the tax-paying process.

I enjoy not only the intellectual challenge of trying to understand exactly what the IRS has in mind by its labyrinthine interpretations of the equally labyrinthine tax code, but also the opportunity to annually puzzle over just what has been happening during the previous year to Rainier96's Ship of Finance as she glided through the treacherous Seas of Insolvency in perpetual quest of the Hidden Isles of Unlimited Liquidity. 

I don't mind paying a bit more in taxes if I unexpectedly discover that I'm -- as a friend so strikingly emailed me this week -- "rolling in dough and swimming in bucks like Scrooge McDuck."  Such a happy denouement, unfortunately, rarely presents itself, but sometimes I do find myself a bit less destitute than anticipated, always a cause for rejoicing.

So I spent the better part of six hours yesterday preparing a gawd-awful number of forms.  (Over my lifetime, I've so conducted my affairs that the complexity of my tax reporting today is totally disproportionate to any amount of taxes conceivably at risk.)  While six hours (essentially working for the government at no pay) might bother some -- a bit of that time, of course, was spent trying to find documents I knew I had somewhere, but couldn't quite seem to locate -- my own struggles during those six hours were fun. More challenging and the results more satisfying than if I'd sat on a park bench doing New York Times crossword puzzles.

And so.  Voilá!  My forms are all typed out: neat, tidy, and elegant.  I'm so pleased. So proud!

De gustibus non est disputandum, right?

And after all -- I do only do it once a year.