Friday, April 18, 2008

Tax Lady rant

I do taxes. I actually like doing taxes until the 14th of April. The 15th you get all sorts of people with the look of panic in their eyes. Most of them just have wage income on a W-2 and no deductions. Those I'll do and get them done in 30 to 45 minutes.

But there's always one. This one brings a bag of receipts to the Wal-mart kiosk at 4pm on the 15th. She says she just has a couple of deductions and her house. I question what deductions and she says her car and cell phone because she uses them for work. So does everybody else, no deduction. Then she claims everybody she works with deducts theirs. So I ask what she does and she tells me she's a patrol officer. Mmmm, right. I told her I'd have to research those two items and get back to her. Then I look at the house stuff. She doesn't even have the damn form the bank sends. All she has is the last two statements from this year. I'm not going to guess how much interest or property taxes she paid last year and told her she had to go get that information.

Then there was the truck driver. He didn't piss and moan nearly as much as the patrol officer. I told him his return would just take too much time to do and I had several people waiting in line. I told him to go to the office and make an appointment for the next week.

Why in the hell would you wait until the last damn minute if you don't even know what you need? Wouldn't it make sense to find out at least a few days before the deadline?

Poor planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on mine. I refuse to be sympathetic to anyone that can't get their shit together in 3 1/2 months time. Or even care a little bit.

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