When Life and Taxes Had a Simpler Form

Hal Thornton of Santa Barbara has sent me a document that ranks with a recording of Glenn Miller’s “Little Brown Jug” as an evocation of a simpler time.

It is a copy of his 1941 income tax return.

It is Form 1040A, for citizens whose gross income was less than $3,000, and was only from sources stated on the form.

As a chief clerk, Thornton earned $2,316.89 that year, and had $50 in additional income.

“To a yuppie it must appear as the wages of a peon in a Third World country,” he says. “Actually, for 1941 in Fairbanks, Alaska, I held an enviable job. I was newly married and there was no need for my wife to work. We started without a nest egg but were able to buy our own log home and make the monthly payments of $50. Our honeymoon house was a bit primitive but had electricity, and I busied myself putting in plumbing, spending many an evening beneath the floor (this saved on movie tickets).”

Thornton’s tax return was a joy in its stark simplicity. It asked his name and address, his occupation (chief clerk), the names of his dependants (none, a wife not counting), his salary ($2,316.89), extra income ($50), total ($2,366.89), less (none) for each dependent, and tax ($69).

Thornton signed it, sent it in with a check, and that’s all there was to it.

“Why should I be depressed?” Thornton asks. “Here in my spacious Santa Barbara home I am surrounded with the stuff to make one euphoric; except: in one hand I’m holding a single yellowing page--a copy of my 1941 U.S. tax return--and in my other is the 1987 instruction mailer from the IRS printing office. I won’t bother to read it because my accountant has already told me the new law is chaotic. . . .

“Somehow in that far-off past, the Feds were able to operate on 3% of my gross income, and if there was a deficit I wasn’t aware of it. (My annual salary then only makes one month’s mortgage payment now.)

“But those days are over. Now I’m depressed as I ponder a table covered with 1099s, K-1s, canceled checks, paid receipts, tax-advice columns and organizational guides from my accountant. . . . And the paper debris I’m staring at is only the first assault to enable my accountant to go through his contortions to feed it into a computer which can’t function because the IRS guidelines aren’t yet out!

“Time is running out for those born in my era. I can’t spare several weeks out of my life each year to placate a paper empire and determine whether I must give up 28% or is it 35%. . . . Who knows: What if my epitaph should read, ‘Here lies a frustrated taxpayer whose last six months on Earth were enslaved by a voracious paper profligate’?”

Thornton urges the young to take heed. If a taxpayer’s lot can become so much more complicated and frustrating in one lifetime, what can the emerging generation look forward to? Can it only get worse?

I hardly remember filling out our tax return in 1941, it was so simple. My wife and I both worked, probably making a combined income of about $3,000. One sheet and four or five entries did it all.

I haven’t worked on a tax return for years. My wife does all the bookkeeping and saves all the relevant checks and receipts. Then, sometime in March or April, we drive out to Glendora to the home of Ed Banbury, our tax accountant. I browse through his library, sipping his wine, while my wife and he go over our accounts and put it all together.

Then we go home and in a few days Banbury sends us our forms to sign. We have only been audited once, and thanks to my wife’s thoroughness, we escaped unscathed.

What worries me, though, is that any year now Ed Banbury is going to crack up from stress. He’s going to break out into tears and throw our accounts to the winds. He’s going to whimper, “I’m sorry, Jack, it’s too complicated. I just can’t do it anymore.”

That’s when I’m going to retire and reduce my income to retirement pay and social security benefits, and play Glenn Miller records all day on the phonograph.