Did you do taxes yet? How did they go? Well, I know they went to Washington, D.C., where they will doubtlessly be spent on important things, such as gifts to interns or $1,000 toilet seats. But what I was asking was how clear were the instructions? Were they easy to follow, or did you have to find the income tax equivalent of a GPS unit?
Mine are somewhat confusing because I have writing income. And I use “somewhat” in the sense that the presidential candidates are somewhat untruthful about their desire to serve the public or Lindsay Lohan somewhat likes publicity and is somewhat a mess. Not that I'm dealing with large amounts of money, mind you, but that doesn't free me from filing schedule D1 unless I'm using Exemption A3 during a new moon in a month with a T in it and the cherry blossoms are blooming, then use Schedule 14C ... Or something like that.
I can never navigate the labyrinth of my taxes, so I have someone else do it. They tell me what to pay and what I need to submit, and that's what I do. I have no idea if the amounts are correct, but I trust the tax preparer, and like I said, the amounts are very small, so no one is getting rich off any errors. In fact, I've received condolence notes from the government and once a crate of military issue ready-to-eat meals that had expired dates.
It may not be totally the tax form's fault that I’m confused. The form uses a lot of math, and I’ve always had a love/hate/loathe/detest relationship with math of any type. This is a shame since math is so important to success, particularly if you're a nuclear scientist or a math teacher or a pole dancer, although why anyone would want to dance around Polish people has always baffled me.
Really, math is simply evil. I kept telling people that, but they keep pointing out that many wonderful things have been built by math, like bridges, satellites, buildings, casinos, nuclear weapons, machine guns, dirty bombs, etc. They lose me after buildings. Truthfully, I’ve never forgiven math since I found out Pi was approximately 3.14159265 and not a round delicious baked good.
That reminds me of this old joke: “Pi are square? No, pie are round.” I said it was an old joke, not that it was a good one. And yes, I know “Pi are square” should be really be rendered as “π r 2” but I thought I would make it easy on those of us who are mathematically challenged.
That formula, by the way, is how you find the area of a circle. In other words, the area is equal to Pi times the radius squared. And the radius is the distance from the center of circle to any point on it. And you can find the diameter of a circle by 2 times the radius, and find the circumference by 2 Pi times the radius blah blah blah. Hey, wake up! The math lesson is finished.
By the way, it’s totally possible I have those formulas wrong, so be careful if you’re building your own nuclear reactor or orbital weapon platform to conquer the world. Any apocalyptic mistakes are strictly your own responsibility.
Anyway, my taxes are done and sent. I’ve done my part to pay the outrageous salaries of Senators and Congressmen. Sigh. It’s almost enough to make me want to be Canadian. Almost.
Copyright 2012 by Stephen B. Bagley. Excerpted from Return of the Floozy. All rights reserved. No copying without express prior written permission from the publisher and author. Thank you for reading.
Buy the new edition of Murder by the Acre here!
2012 Oakleaf Harbor Christmas Cards now on sale!
Buy Floozy and Other Stories at Amazon.com
Buy Floozy and Other Stories at Barnes&Noble.com
Buy Floozy and Other Stories in paperback at Lulu.com
Buy Floozy and Other Stories in hardcover at Lulu.com
Buy Murder by Dewey Decimal at Amazon.com
Buy Murder by Dewey Decimal at Barnes&Noble.com
Buy Murder by Dewey Decimal at BooksAMillion.com
Buy Murder by Dewey Decimal at Lulu.com
Buy Murder by the Acre at Amazon.com
Buy Murder by the Acre at Barnes&Noble.com
Buy Murder by the Acre at BooksAMillion.com
Buy Murder by the Acre in soft cover at Lulu.com
Buy Murder by the Acre in hardcover at Lulu.com
Buy Floozy, MBTA & MBDD items and more at Oakleaf Harbor
No comments:
Post a Comment