Taxes: One of life's certainties

I've always hated filling out forms. I do fine with forms that ask your name, address and astrological sign. I get really stressed out when they switch to numbers, percentages, grosses, subtract line F by line G multiplying it by the number of calories you ate yesterday and your license plate number. I start shutting down right after the bit about line F.

I find that taxes are the worst forms of all. In fact I imagine hell to be some kind of place where you continually have to file taxes the entire year not just at the eleventh hour on April 15th. Some people actually live in a world like that. They call themselves accountants.

Over the last year I've had a plethora of accountants. Most of these are friends and family members who owed me favors. But apparently I'm a tough case because a few of these people have sworn never to file for me again. I'm not even on speaking terms with one of my past accountants. Marshall my brother in law took pity on me one year after my father refused to do my taxes on April 14th. He was very helpful and did a fine job but I decided never to use him again. The mocking just got to be too much. What ever happened to Amnesty for life?

Luckily this year my sweet husband assured me that he had taxes all under control. He spread out all our W-2's on the kitchen table on April 15th about 6 p.m. as I was cooking dinner. Now he knows me really well and knows how easy it is to get a rise out of me. Here is what he did.

Spencer busily stooped over the papers suddenly grabs my W-2 and in a super stressed voice said "You've got to be kidding me...the recent return rate dividend allotment in percentages....bla bla bla ...Alaska .... doesn't add up"

"what?!? WHAT?!?!" I said all panicked that something was seriously wrong. "What can we doooooooooooooooooo?"

Then he gave me the cutest grin, and I knew I'd been had. Darn it! We both started laughing so hard that we started crying. 2 hours later we were happily finished. So in conclusion this was the least stressful year of taxes as it ended in laughter. But as far as laughing and taxes are concerned Uncle Sam paid us $$$ back this year meaning he was earning the interest and controlling investment power on OUR hard earned money the entire year. Somehow Uncle Sam always gets the last laugh.