Most people with the ability to learn from mistakes in the long term don’t save their taxes until the very last moment. That means, given my observations around town, means that most people probably do wait until the very last moment. I, being both a genius (in the big fish, small pond sense) and poor (in the it’s a happy coincidence I kind of like instant noodles sense) filed early so I could get my returns and stop having mild anxiety attacks when the electric bill auto-pays. Well, since I’m what the business refers to as ‘a creative,’ the side of my brain dedicated to mathematics wildly flails a stick in the general direction of oncoming formulas. However, thanks to the ridiculous and arcane system set in place by the local tax department, I taught myself this year how to file on paper. But what’s that you say? Not all cities have individual tax filing? Yes, when I asked friends for help on the internet, the near universal reaction was “Away- Insert Song Lyrics Here.” Closely followed by “City tax? What the hell is that? Can they do that? Stop asking me to join your Armored Core V team.”
I’m going to play coy and act like it’s difficult to figure out where I live. See, my city is one of the ones that takes its own chunk of sales tax out of each paycheck in addition to the federal and state’s tandem bites. But there are two crucial differences between the Federal/State taxes and the City tax. Firstly, our city scoffs at the EZ 1040 and provides its own, the IR-BABOON form. Secondly, where the other agencies give some money back, the city form is carefully designed so that you WILL break even, or owe them like two bucks. Note that in the rare occurrence the local tax form tilts in your favor, the department won’t give you diddly unless the amount exceeds five dollars. Which it won’t. The evil Kryptonian supercomputer slumbering below the rec center has seen to that.
Anyway. Being under 40, I rely heavily on my computer for most things, and the idea of filing my taxes without sitting in a too-chilly office with an agent or god forbid, learning MATH, online filing appeals to me. There’s easy, hand-holding programs to help you if you find the official government e-file sites to obtuse. I was pretty partial to H&R Block as a midway point between ‘actually doing shit for myself’ and ‘paying someone a hundred bucks to do it for me.’ It’s full of soothing greens, and nice, rounded corner graphics. It’s a design theme that works well for unthreatening software as well as eco-friendly baby wipes. However, much as our town is above embracing a 1040 form, it also is incompatible with the software suite. But not to fear! As of the year… 2008 or so, electronic filing options were added!
By the town neighboring us! But hey, they were nice enough to play host to our own town’s e-file. You just had to enter a personalized ID code sent to you via snail mail to log into the site. Mine was conveniently sent to someplace I lived out about 2 addresses ago. Luckily, I’m still on speaking terms with my family, so that wasn’t a huge obstacle. In spite of my employer’s best efforts to keep me from logging in to view my W-2 online, I successfully filed.
This year, however, I guess our city got drunk and made an ass of itself in front of the other townships at a tri-county mixer, as the city was now put in charge of its own e-file system. Pardon me, i-Filing system. That should probably be a warning flag right off, as was the fact the old e-filing site pointed toward the new one… with a broken link. So, I attempted to register, but to do so, it asked me to provide my social security number along with a mysterious ‘account number.’ Of course! The snail mail postcard number! That… did not work. Perplexed, I wrote the head of the tax department who wanted some confirming information, followed by being sent the number I needed. Except it didn’t work either. Logging in told me I needed to register. Attempting to register the number told me the number was taken. The “Lost Password” link told me that said number didn’t exist. Frustrated, I printed off the paper form and stared at it a while, then attempted to fill it out. End tally- I somehow thought that I owed the city nearly twice what I earn.
The next day, I remembered technically, my city had changed when I moved to this place. Filled with hope, I navigated my way to the tax site for my new home town. Surely, it was a better place to live, even though I had just moved down the street and apparently crossed an invisible district line. Log in. Forgot password? Register. Familiar words. Welcoming words, even. I clicked Register, and was momentarily confused that it took me to the help page for registration. I skimmed it a bit, and at the end, was a link inviting me to continue on to registration.
The login page reappeared. I blinked. My throat dried a little, and I croaked a polite complaint. Maybe I had misclicked. I repeated the process, carefully looking for other possible links to register, only to continue looping around, while my Firefox tabs kept multiplying and shrinking to accommodate one another. Frustrated, I decided to cut my losses and go back to City 1’s site. No luck there either. I printed off a second copy of the city tax paper, began it, then the cat leapt onto my clipboard and scooted right across Section A. Taking this as a sign, I called it a night.
At last, it was this morning. The tax deadline. I may not be an early bird filer (when it comes to the stupid city forms), but I haven’t missed out. Paranoia and all. I looked over an old return, trying to reverse engineer the equations. It looked SO EASY. I could almost taste it. Then it hit me- 1.75% is .0175, not 1.75! I printed a fourth copy of the god damned form. I tried again with this discovery. It was uncanny- the form virtually completed itself from there! With a song in my heart (“Fuck You,” by Cee Lo Green, to be precise), I hurried to the city building before work, dropped that form off, and with that, I was free. Free to go home and stare at the monitor for another twenty minutes before trudging off to work.
So remember, gentle reader. 95% of your math classes are stupid bullshit, but remember how decimal places work.
~fin~
yes i’m working on another comic