The tax man cometh April 15, 2024
The song “Tax Man” bounds around in my head, partly because
the local rock station can’t stop playing it this time of year – George Harrison
one of the few musicians who used his art to complain about how unfair the tax
system was when he and the other Beatles sat on top of the musical world.
I’ve generally been diligent in filing my tax returns yearly,
though this was much easier when I worked in a warehouse or a Dunkin or even in
a Fotomat booth, and somehow got more complicated and expensive as time went
on.
This year one of the tax services charged us $600 to do what
I had in the past done for myself, and perhaps, now that I am semi-retired with
a very limited income, we might once again do it for ourselves and be free of
the leaches that take advantage of working people this time of year.
For some reason, I actually failed to file one year, at some
point in the mid-1980s and really don’t know why I didn’t, finding myself on
the wrong side of the tax man until I filed a late return more than a year
later.
Every so often over the years, I would get a report from the
federal government about my record of payments – showing two significant gaps.
The first gap in earnings came from 1968 through 1972 when I
was on the run from the police, and did not show an income. This is somewhat deceptive
since I did work during that period, briefly in LA, and then two jobs in New
York City during the months leading up to and after the birth of my daughter.
But I was doing it under someone else’s name, Ernest Hoffee,
who had left his set of ID at Free Press Bob’s office in LA as collateral for a
bundle of papers he was to sell on the street, and he never returned to get –
although he did acquire a jay walking ticket prior to this, for which I was
briefly jailed until my common law wife produced the $15 fine to get me out.
I can only imagine years later how puzzled he must have been
when he got his tax report that showed him employed during that period.
By accident, the hospital gave my daughter his last name
instead of my real name, something we had to change legally much later,
although my daughter and I briefly considered having her call him up to tell
him my daughter was his daughter, and we had documents to prove it.
I looked him up at some point. He was born in Canton, Ohio
to a very religious family, and later resettled in Florida.
I did not pursue the matter beyond that.
The second gap in my tax record came in 1979 into 1980, when
I was unemployed and going to college, working off the books as a roadie and
light man for a local bar band, an exhausting time in my life since I could
barely keep up with study by day and party by night, yet, which remains one of
those periods I look back at fondly, since a number of those with whom I worked
have not survived, and the tax record merely reminds me of their passing, and
how complicated life can become, and how different it all looks when looking
back instead of ahead, the presumptions we all had about our futures that never
transpired.
What is the old saying, there is nothing certain in life,
except death and taxes. So, true, so, very, very true.
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