Tax Day: Still Plenty of Time

By Bob Wire, 4-14-08

Well, here it is, April 14. Time to start thinking about the possibility of making an effort to begin considering the idea of working towards getting our taxes done. I mean, why wait ‘til the last minute, like the rest of those idiots.

I purchased TurboTax™ ’05 at a yard sale last weekend, so I am ready. Got my pillowcase full of receipts, a wad of W-2’s, and I dug all my 1099-MISC forms out from under the driver’s seat of my truck. It pays to keep good records, and to know where they are.

The kids have caught the school bus, Barb has left for work, and now it’s just me, TurboTax, and a shit load of numbers. I’d better make some coffee…

Okay. Big ol’ pot of coffee, Turkish style (hot as hell, black as death, sweet as love). Got a steaming mug at hand, printing calculator with fresh batteries and a fat roll of paper, and now I’m ready. I punch a few numbers into the calculator to clear it out so it’s ready for the first string of computations, my 2007 freelance earnings.

Hey, what the hell…this thing isn’t printing. Damn. I take the cover off and check the print head, and it’s shot. Drier than a bung hole in Phoenix. Shit. I call Office City, and they agree to deliver one. Well, that’s going to be at least a half hour, so I decide to go rub one out, just to get that out of the way. I’m sure I’ll find other ways to fill the remaining 28 minutes.

Finally, the print head arrives. I install it into the printer, run a few test equations, and now I am ready. But not quite—I’ll need some music. Preferably something instrumental, but not surf music. Hmm. How about some Miles Davis? I choose Sketches of Spain, and get the CD going. Nice. Puts me in the mood for math! Yeah! Let’s get after it!

I install the TurboTax software, but can’t find last year’s return anywhere on the laptop. I swear that I did it on this computer, but then I remember I erased and rebuilt its hard drive last summer. Damn. Then it occurs to me that I had backed up everything on the external hard drive down in my office. I go down and unplug that fat bastard and bring it up to the kitchen table, where I have set up my Tax Command Center.

I plug it in and discover an old iTunes library that has all those Bottle Rockets and Golden Smog songs I thought I’d lost! Damn, what a find! I set it up to copy those over to the laptop. This takes a while, so I zip over to Firefox and check traffic on my website. Then I go to craigslist and see if anyone’s selling anything I can’t live without. Hey, here’s a pair of nearly new Chaco’s, men’s size 8. I need a pair of those! I email the seller, and she agrees to meet me in the KMart parking lot in 20 minutes.

I return from KMart with my new used sandals—a perfect fit—and the computer has finished copying the music files. Finally! Time to buckle down and get after these taxes. No more fooling around. No more lollygagging.

But now it’s lunch time. I can’t be expected to write fiction on an empty stomach, can I? I find a leftover pork chop in the fridge, and make myself a bodacious sandwich that should fuel the ol’ brain cells until dinner. After finishing the sandwich, I clean up the kitchen and settle in behind the laptop. I open up a new TurboTax document, and it immediately asks me for my Social Security number. No problem (I’m so old mine has only four digits). Then it asks for Barb’s. That I don’t know. I call her office, but get her voice mail. I break the connection without leaving a message. I think she’s got it written down in her address book, which is in the nightstand in the bedroom. I go in there and find the book. I lay back on the bed and start perusing the book, looking for her number. Lunch has made me a little sleepy. I look over on the nightstand and see a bottle of hand lotion. I’ve got the house to myself, I think, and I’m still a young man. Twice in one day? It’s rare, but not unheard of.

Three minutes later I return to the kitchen with Barb’s SSN. I plug in the info and click over to the next page, where it asks me to enter all the info from our W-2’s. At this moment the dog starts barking, and I go to the living room window to see what’s got his dander up. It’s the mailman. As a freelancer, I love the mailman. Any day, he could be bringing me a check. So I go out to the driveway and act like I’m checking the air in the truck tires until he leaves. I don’t want to appear too anxious. Alas, no checks today, only a couple of bills and a new Guitar Player magazine. Whoo-hoo, it’s got Billy Gibbons on the cover, playing his Gretsch Penguin! I love ZZ Top, and he’s one of my all-time favorites.

Sitting on the front porch, I look up from the magazine and realize 45 minutes have gone by while I read the Billy Gibbons interview (he uses a Mexican peso for a pick!). Then I couldn’t pass up the article entitled “Is Your Nut Sauce Letting You Down?” Fascinating. But now I’ve REALLY got to quit messing around, and get to those taxes. The school bus will be coming by in less than two hours, but I think I can get a good chunk of it done by then.

I put on another pot of coffee, just to make sure I’m dead alert for the task at hand. I crack my knuckles and put a pencil behind my ear. Even though I’m using a computer, this makes me feel more productive somehow. I put some Coltrane on the stereo, and bring the computer back to life.

I take a few minutes to review my file folders full of receipts, and I suddenly realize that I have been stuffing this year’s receipts into last year’s file. Good god, I’ll have to straighten this out. There goes another 20 minutes.

Why did I save this receipt for eight Chick-O-Sticks and a six pack of Miller High Life? Let’s see…it’s from a truck stop in Gillette, Wyoming, dated March 14, 2007. Ah…the Kerouac road trip to Denver. I wrote about it in the Independent, so this is definitely a writing expense. I’d better start a new file folder for that. I look around for a black Sharpie, but can’t find one. I have every other color of Sharpie known to man (and a couple that are not), but for this I need a black one, goddammit! I search my drawers in the studio, ransack the glove box in the truck, and empty my computer bag. No black Sharpies.

I get on the horn to Office City, and they agree to deliver a black Sharpie. What the hell, I tell them, since you’re driving all the way up here, make it two.

Well, that will be another half hour, so I nuke a package of microwave popcorn. I peruse the guitar magazine while I eat the popcorn, and in 20 minutes it’s gone. I look at my watch. At least ten minutes till the Sharpie gets here, but it’s also less than half an hour before the school bus discharges Rusty and Speaker, and my tax session will come to an end at that point.

There’s still tonight, though, and all day tomorrow.

Ten minutes. Dare I go for the hat trick?

[Will Bob get his taxes done in time? Or will he be writing his next column from prison? Find out by clicking to NewWest.net/BobWire every day.]

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