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True Tales of the TaxBwana
Feb. 6th, 2020 07:55 pmGrayest of gray days. Temps never rose above freezing. All day long, a sleety drizzle fell, and the trees were visibly sagging under the weight of the ice.
My first TaxBwana client of the day was a retiree with an inane giggle. Very quiet, very forgettably dressed. Never married. Eyes a tad too bright.
Some time in June, this guy went to one of those glitzy new casinos in the area and squandered the entire contents of his IRA—$33,000—playing a single slot machine. He said it took him two days during which he never slept and rarely went to the bathroom.
I didn’t know whether to applaud or feel appalled.
The guy gets a very handsome pension from the state of New York. He spent a lifetime as a bus mechanic. So, you know. He’s gotta pay taxes on the money he lost. But he’s not in any danger of starving.
And for all I know, he had a lot of fun. Everyone treated him like a high roller! Someone very important. Maybe for the first time in his life.
Still.
Thirty-three thousand dollars.
“I know I shouldn’t have,” he said.
I shrugged. If he wanted a referral to Gambler’s Anonymous, he’d come to the wrong tax preparer.
“Did you ever watch The Twilight Zone?” I asked.
I was referring to this episode.
He nodded. “It was a little like that.”
###
My next clients were Jack and Diane from the John Mellencamp song. Married 30 years. They were a long way from being young and beautiful, but they hadn’t yet reached that point where you could no longer recognize that once they had been young and beautiful. (Which is the point I’m at now. I look at my face and wonder, How did Grandma Fiore get in that mirror? I hardly look like me to myself anymore. And it’s all happened just in this past year.)
She was on permanent disability. He’d just spent 11 months on workman’s comp. Their big issue was that they had taken in a neighbor’s child three years ago when the deadbeat parents decided the kid was getting in the way of their dope habit.
Jack and Diane went to court last year to attain legal guardianship. But the deadbeat parents still kept claiming the girl as a dependent. This affected Jack and Diane’s Earned Income Credit, which is the biggest chunk of cash they get from filing taxes. So, you know. I had to make sure their taxes got e-filed the very second I finished them so the deadbeat parents wouldn’t get away with the hustle two years in a row.
There were other clients with other stories.
Everybody has a story, you know?
And those W2 forms, 1099-MISCs, and other anonymous-looking, bureaucratic forms tell that story every bit as convincingly as a pack of Tarot cards.
My first TaxBwana client of the day was a retiree with an inane giggle. Very quiet, very forgettably dressed. Never married. Eyes a tad too bright.
Some time in June, this guy went to one of those glitzy new casinos in the area and squandered the entire contents of his IRA—$33,000—playing a single slot machine. He said it took him two days during which he never slept and rarely went to the bathroom.
I didn’t know whether to applaud or feel appalled.
The guy gets a very handsome pension from the state of New York. He spent a lifetime as a bus mechanic. So, you know. He’s gotta pay taxes on the money he lost. But he’s not in any danger of starving.
And for all I know, he had a lot of fun. Everyone treated him like a high roller! Someone very important. Maybe for the first time in his life.
Still.
Thirty-three thousand dollars.
“I know I shouldn’t have,” he said.
I shrugged. If he wanted a referral to Gambler’s Anonymous, he’d come to the wrong tax preparer.
“Did you ever watch The Twilight Zone?” I asked.
I was referring to this episode.
He nodded. “It was a little like that.”
###
My next clients were Jack and Diane from the John Mellencamp song. Married 30 years. They were a long way from being young and beautiful, but they hadn’t yet reached that point where you could no longer recognize that once they had been young and beautiful. (Which is the point I’m at now. I look at my face and wonder, How did Grandma Fiore get in that mirror? I hardly look like me to myself anymore. And it’s all happened just in this past year.)
She was on permanent disability. He’d just spent 11 months on workman’s comp. Their big issue was that they had taken in a neighbor’s child three years ago when the deadbeat parents decided the kid was getting in the way of their dope habit.
Jack and Diane went to court last year to attain legal guardianship. But the deadbeat parents still kept claiming the girl as a dependent. This affected Jack and Diane’s Earned Income Credit, which is the biggest chunk of cash they get from filing taxes. So, you know. I had to make sure their taxes got e-filed the very second I finished them so the deadbeat parents wouldn’t get away with the hustle two years in a row.
There were other clients with other stories.
Everybody has a story, you know?
And those W2 forms, 1099-MISCs, and other anonymous-looking, bureaucratic forms tell that story every bit as convincingly as a pack of Tarot cards.
