Insult + Insult Is Added To Financial Injury

Even Steven is not a scofflaw. He obeys Murphy's Law to a "T".

I have put off filing the Hillbilly tax return because I was more comfortable with my head in the sand. Every year, I calculate our taxes. Sure, I allow my BFF TurboTax to look over my shoulder. For the past couple of years, I've filed online. I don't like it. But that's getting to be the only option.

How I rue the loss of those special days in January when one could open up their mailbox, EmBee, and find a thick booklet of Federal 1040 instructions and forms. And just a few days later, EmBee would disgorge the more svelte, pretty green and white Missouri 1040 instruction booklet. Which was kind of like one of those weird math puzzles where you add and subtract and divide and multiply and add and subtract...and end up with the number you started with.

Then the government took me away from all that. "File online! It's simple! It's free!" When they really meant you had no choice, and that it was only free for SOME people, but not the Hillbilly family, because they make too much money and pay their own way, and so they should rightly pay for the privilege of filing online in order to pay the government more taxes.

At first, you could pick up forms at the Post Office, and continue to file by mail. Then you had to get your hands on a computer, printer, and internet, and download your forms to file by mail. Then you were practically an outcast, an archaic curmudgeon, an anachronism if you filed by mail. So Mrs. Hillbilly Mom took the bait, bit the bullet, forked out cash for TurboTax, filed online, and mailed in her check to Missouri and sometimes the Feds.

But the #1 son took me away from all that. He had the audacity to go off to college and get his identity stolen. Allegedly. According to the IRS, who is withholding his refund, from the tax return that he never filed, because he has never held a paying job. Oh, and because he is the dependent of Farmer H and Mrs. Hillbilly Mom, we cannot file online anymore. So sayeth the IRS worker I contacted about #1's official letter. "When did YOU file? You haven't? GOOD! Make sure you don't file electronically! Your return will be kicked out, and won't be processed until that identity theft is resolved. File a police report. Download form blankety-blank and send to the address on it. Send a copy with your paper return."

Yeah. Only the blankety-blank form had not the proper address for sending info refuting the claim that a return had been filed by the authentic SS# holder. Only an address for sending info that the authentic SS# holder was deceased during the tax year. Good thing Mrs. Hillbilly Mom is a sleuthy, card-carrying member of Mystery, Inc. That form was shipped off weeks ago, after a detour to college for #1's sigature. So today I dipped my tootsies in the water of my paper return. It has been done for weeks, but waiting for an interval before sending. Aging like a fine wine. Or stinky cheese.

I hollered for Farmer H's signature. Batched it all up. Wrote my amount due check. Slapped those puppies in two manilla envelopes, because documentation is a fat b*tch, and licked the flap and bent the prongs of the first.

And saw that I had sealed my check in the Federal envelope instead of the Missouri envelope.

Back down to my dark basement lair for another manilla. I barely made it to the dead-mouse-smelling Post Office on time. And, I might add, it was smelling especially potent today.

We'll see how long it takes this drama to play out. I don't foresee the fat lady singing for quite some time. I fear she may go through a bout of laryngitis, a fainting spell, a period of inactivity when her understudy takes over due to a home-plate collision with a Humpty Dumpty with a melon head during a softball game in the Broadway Show League, and a brief hospitalization for exhaustion.

Not counting those unhatched chickens just yet.