Friday, April 17, 2020

A Taxing Operation

How the IRS creates tax forms: 1. Draft out a nice, all-encompassing form in plain English. 2. Shred and toss in a salad with an Italian dressing. 3. Reassemble at the hands of a guy with only a vague understanding of the English language. 4. Break out the thesaurus and replace every possible word with a fancy-sounding equivalent. (So fancy! So incomprehensible!) 5. Condense every multi-word term into an acronym, while forgetting to remind people what they all stand for. 6. Divide into 800+ different forms covering every possible idiotic variation. ("No, Form 9802-A is for if you've stood on your head while working part-time. Form 9802-D is to declare you've stroked a fluffy cat on the job.")

I've probably exhausted my allotted amount of snide comments for the month.  I regret nothing. 

I finished up my taxes this week (yes, the deadline was extended this year, but I didn't want it hanging over me any longer).  And not only was I reminded just how much of a headache it is making sense of all the instructions and whatnot, but I also discovered that there really are over 800 different tax forms.  And thus did the agonized screams of a thousand tormented souls echo up to the skies and make the folks over by Alpha Centauri wonder what the heck was going on. 
Posted by at
Labels: ,

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)