A Lighter View
The ice cometh
By K.E.H. Stagg

April 15, 2010

It has to be an omen that the day before taxes are due, Dillsburg awoke to heavy frost. In fact, it was so cold that those of us who parked outside were scraping ice off our vehicles before toodling off to work.

I had several other omens both before and after the ice scraping. First of all, I didn’t know that Dillsburg was going into deep freeze mode and last heard that Eve of Taxes had been forecast for the ‘70s. I couldn’t find my summer sandals and spent futile moments tearing around my apartment, rummaging through bags. I eventually settled for a pair of shoes not best suited to traversing the ice, and managed to scrape my ankle on the curb when I realized that I was looking at frozen precipitation—not just wet stuff—all over my car.

Then began the quasi-successful scraping. As luck would have it, my windshield washer fluid had either evaporated or turned solid because of the cold, so I had to blast heat onto the windows and hope the frantic beating of the wipers would clear away the chips of snowy frost.

Later on, as my car rattled ominously and I wondered whether I’d even make it to work, it dawned on me that this was all strangely appropriate for Tax Day Eve.

One of the positive aspects when contemplating the pencil heads who process our tax returns is that their numbers will soon swell, thanks to the recent passage of nationalized health care. I, for one, look forward to them sifting through the payment process for health care, knowing that Uncle Sammy’s tax minions are a full 6 to 7 years behind the audit of tax returns and now are tasked with wading into the minutiae of who pays how much for bandages and the like.

I may well have shuffled off this mortal coil before the financial gurus determine that I owe more than my copay for corn pads, and that strikes me as poetic justice since I paid high tax rates for years as a self-employed individual, and am now priviledged to foot medical bills for those who never bothered to pay taxes to begin with.

Oh, no! I’m not bitter. I just can’t wait for the day when IRS staff members get to sort out how much the government should pay for citizens’ colonoscopies, or whether wart removal is a “covered” service.