I begrudgingly mailed off my tax paperwork yesterday, including a check made out to the District of Columbia for the amount that I "owe" them. I wanted to write something on the memo line to the effect of "This is the last you'll ever get from me you thieving, bloodsucking bastards" but I didn't have any room left after I put down my social security number and other assorted information that they require on the memo line. Anyways, it's not like they'd read it, as they would just cash it immediately so that they could spend it at Saks Fifth Avenue or purchase venetian blinds for their vacation home in the Caribbean (today's WashPost article about Harriette Walters, the DC tax office manager who embezzled $50 million of DC taxpayer money, really sheds some light on what a banana republic this city truly is. Kids are gunning each other down in the streets while city employees dress themselves in furs and Versace acquired with your money).
Anyways, having mailed off my signed forms and checks, I was under the impression that I would not have to bother with the subject of taxes until next year. I was rather proud of the fact that I had even managed to do this a few months before the deadline. This illusion was promptly shattered, however, when I came home last night to find a thick envelope waiting for me, courtesy of the Internal Revenue Service. I really thought my brain was going to explode, right then and there, all over the clean kitchen floor, when I discovered that I apparently owed the IRS over $2,000, due March 12. Unbeknownst to both myself and my bank account, I had apparently earned an extra $17,000 in income during 2006 and failed to report it to our government overlords. Where this extra $17,000 in income went, I do not know, but I really wish I would have known about it so that I could have taken that trip to China and North Korea, or perhaps purchased a Nintendo Wii.
Upon reading the notice from the IRS, my first thought was that I had really screwed up while using TurboTax. Like, did I forgot to fill out a box or two when I was doing my taxes last year? I mean, I know I'm not good at math, but $17,000 is a pretty big number. But once I started going through the paperwork, I concluded that, obviously, this total financial screw up was not my fault. For whatever reason, my employer sent the IRS two different W-2s (whereas I received, well, just one correct W-2) and now the government beancounters think I'm trying to evade my patriotic duty of paying for idiotic Baby Boomer foreign policy screw ups, National Guard ads on NASCAR cars, and various pork barrel projects.
I am currently in the process of writing a letter to the IRS and gathering my supporting documentation so that they don't send the jackbooted thugs to kick in my door and drag me off to federal prison. Still, if you don't hear from me for a few years, it's likely that I'm behind bars somewhere stamping license plates. Hopefully they'll go easy on me and send me to one of those comfy minimum security prisons where they send white collar criminals like Martha Stewart. Maybe I could even get some networking done while serving time. I'd probably be the envy of my fellow MBA students ("Yeah, been there, done that, dudes. It ain't fun.")
As it is, I am probably marked for life in the government's system and will have all of my future returns scrutinized. C'est la vie, comrades.
(Fun fact: Exactly three years ago, in February 2005, someone wrote, in reference to me, "It's like she [is] just begging for an IRS audit." Yeah, you can stop laughing now.)
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My favorite sign: "They're paid to be here" (latimes.com)
