File With a Smile

Each month of the American popular calendar has something big going for it, something to anticipate. November = Thanksgiving. October = Halloween. December = Overspending. January = The bills. February = Valentine’s. May = Warm Three-Day Weekend.

April, however, is a seriously troubled month that launches with a feeble day of jokes. Sure, April brings daylight saving time, which doesn’t save anything except one hour of sleep. It has baseball’s real opening day, which is so yesterday. Regularly, April also gets Easter, a holiday that always finds Sunday but otherwise floats about the calendar like a troubled TV show seeking better ratings.

Ever wonder why April isn’t the big month for weddings? You’d think that the first full month of spring, bearing a promise of new beginnings, growth, light and warmth would meld well with rings, flowers, earnest lifetime vows that get revoked half the time and immense white dresses with obvious yards of leftover material.

So April is left with April 15, Income Tax Day, a day to test your conscience and obey faceless functionaries incapable of intelligible directions. Some see April 15 as the opportunity for citizens to shoulder their unfair share of this democracy’s costs; those folks tend to have larger write-offs. Others see today as a chance to reach out and connect with democracy’s inner spirit, the endless official grasping of private dollars. And an annual chance for an audit.

Think of it as a reverse lottery, like the military draft, an opportunity to meet and be there for an Internal Revenue Service agent trying to reach his revenue quota. Television tonight will show cars at the post office, with suddenly conscientious drivers mailing 2003 income tax reports before the midnight deadline. Schmedline. Anyone can mail their taxes, if they’ve got a 37-cent stamp. Or do them online, if they’ve got a PhD in applied electronics. But only a select few qualify to win an audit. Here are a few tips for lonely taxpayers seeking to attract IRS attention:

First, avoid the crowds; file late. Don’t bother to arrange an extension. The IRS isn’t going anywhere. Send in your taxes when you get a chance.

Second, ensure that charitable deductions far exceed total income. Tell them that, having lost all receipts in an undocumented fire destroying only your file cabinets, you now understand the feelings of those with nothing, causing you to donate more than you had. It’ll touch the tax guys deeply.

Third, on numerous numbered lines, write: N/A. It’s like a wink across the bar. The curiosity will drive them crazy. You’ll surely get some quality IRS face-time then. And once you’re on their audit list, you’ll have something to look forward to every April.