It used to be that our taxes must be paid on or before (preferably before) the 15th of March. This, of course, meant the previous years’ taxes. It takes a while to get the job done and people need more leeway in arranging their affairs so they can be inspected by the bloodless accountants hired to do the government’s work.
I could never be an accountant. I just am not good at figures. It pleases me to have Carol do all the tasks required to do the paper work and make us look good for the government at this time of the year. I have had only one tax form questioned over the years and that was long ago when I had an accountant who, along with the government, did not agree with my reasoning for making deductions. I had to go alone to the tax people, abase my self and pay the troll. I fired the accountant but did not feel good about it. I felt that I really had been a bad person and needed to be taken down a peg. But, my transgressions pale before the monstrous deceptions people with lots of money perform to keep most of it while the wrath of government falls on those least able to survive on pittances afforded the least educated and the most vulnerable to dates like the Ides of March.
Death and taxes. Actually, taxes come before death in most cases. I personally would like to be able to take my money with me after I die but where would that be and what could I spend it on? Taxes have not generally been associated with the date in March (which is now postponed to April). In Antiquity, Mesopotamian people as well as the Italian tribes, chief of which became the Romans, this 15th (Ides) was the kind of celebration that people beset by winter months and the small death of nature with the disappearance of leaves and onset of cold, rain and snow, looked forward to feeling better about themselves and lay around and drank a lot and “let go”. Self-indulgence means spending on yourself.
If March appears on the calendar, then April and May will show up soon. Then we will know that winter’s back has been broken and spring is here and summer will follow. But, what does this have to do with taxes? The fiduciary types will have to explain that and the revenoors will come to your doors to enforce the collection that you have delayed until beyond endurance by the dour and linear types.
Now, I like to pay taxes. I think it is part and parcel of living in a democracy. Unfortunately, there are many who think that having more money than anyone else, is like always being at the head of the line and wearing the latest fashions and eating and spending as though there would never be enough to fill a spiritual and physical emptiness that disfigure some few of us. Happy Ides of March. Taxes will not be due until a month from now. Try to be like me. I pay my share gladly.