A Fine Eduation

Its fair to say, that Husband and I are a little bit behind on our taxes. How far? Lets just say if we were an airport, the security level would currently read red, meaning we are high risk. High risk of what you may ask? Well, high risk of being Bertha’s new cell mate and all around bitch, that’s what.

Previously the whole US tax thing never scared me, cos I was a resident of another country, so Uncle Sam couldn’t touch me. Now however, I have become a US resident and Uncle Sam wants his share. The only thing is, I have no idea how to go about giving it to him. I don’t know why, but y’all here in the US of A, have a very complicated system when it comes to tax paying, which is a large part of the reason I have assumed the ostrich* position on the issue. That and the fact that Husband had told me not to worry about it, cos we were filing jointly, so I didn’t. Only one day the thought struck me, “wait a second, if you haven’t done your taxes in years, and we are filing jointly, then that means if you are going down, then I’m going down too? Ok, that sh*t ain’t happen’in, let me go get myself an education on US tax sorting out of receipts, tax filling out of forms and tax sending of the money to the government, or if luck be on our side, collecting of a rebate.

I told Husband that we needed to get it together on the taxes. That its time to play grown ups and finally get on top of the situation. I also insisted I be apart of the process, that way I could learn and know what I was doing every year the taxes were due. Husband said, “Oh, you want to be part of the process? You want to learn? No problem, here you go” and he handed me a huge stack of invoices, receipts, bank statements, credit card statements and expense reports to sort through. The good news was, that was just for 2007. There were many more piles where that came from for 2006 and 2005. What had I let myself in for?

So for the past 2 days, I’ve been locked up in my tower, ala Rapunzel style, combing my way, not through hair, but piles of receipts and documents in an effort to organize and re-organize them into their proper years, categories and sub categories. It’s a slow, soul-destroying process that has caused me to develop the posture, back pain and ass numbness of a women in her late 90’s. I also think my mental health is in danger, cos I often catch myself talking to the receipts. “Now where did you come from? What pile am I suppose to put you in? Oh, I suppose you so special, you want a pile all to yourself, like you is exclusive of some’in”. I even do accents, you know, for the receipts and expenses from other countries. “May wee, leetal receipt, where ‘ave you come from?” That’s my French accent in case you were wondering.

But there you have it. I wanted to help and learn, so here I am, helping and learning my ass off. All in the name of giving the government my share and more importantly, keeping myself from ever having to meet and befriend Bertha.

* Ostrich Position: burying ones head in the sand on important issues, in the hope that they will 1. sort themselves out, or 2. just go away.

This is my current work space. Trust me, its organized chaos. But you can see why my brain is close to being fried right now.