Ah, the joy of taxes. Nothing quite beats sitting down with a calculator, a T4 and a wodge of receipts and forms -- or, if you’re a lazy bastard who never leaves the house, just a wodge of forms -- and watching the numbers dance up and down like something the Count on Sesame Street might see in the wee hours of the morning were he partial to absinthe. Only one thing could be better, and that’s having to do it twice over because, despite all the fnaph you put yourself through in 2001 after neglecting to file for the previous two years, despite vowing that you’d never do that again, no sir, you nevertheless failed to file your return in 2002. That’s just the kind of guy you are, apparently. Dammit. Dammit dammit dammit.So you sit down with the calculator and a scrap sheet of paper and start writing and typing numbers. Numbers here, numbers there; total income from your first employer of the year plus total income from your second employer of the year less CPP contributions and pension adjustment less union dues plus rent divided by five and added to one-tenth annual income as calculated on Schedule 1 but not yet including provincial tax from Form 428 less provincial tax credits multiplied by pi minus .12 for readjusted integral lower-middle bracket contrasubinterantifibulations and 0.9% off the top for free tacos at the staff Christmas party.
The rising exhiliration of watching the deductions adding up followed by the plummeting feeling when you see the instruction “multiply by 6.16%.” Realising you’ve forgotten to add in your EI benefits so instead of paying out $18 you’re actually going to be getting back about $200, and who cares if that seems too good to be true, that’s what you’re going to put down. Moving on to the next year’s return in a spirit of relief and guarded optimism, and watching the numbers bounce up and down, and noticing for the first time that you don’t seem to have a pension plan with your new employer, which is something you’re definitely going to have to look into, and in the meantime you’re unsure whether it’s this or the change of employment which has at least temporarily driven up your total year’s income into a bracket in which the rent which seems so exorbitant when you empty out your bank account each month is no longer sufficient to give you a provincial tax deduction because when you divide the year’s total by five and take your income and multiply it by
...
and eventually you stop hitting your head against the wall and just mail in the freaking thing. Apparently I’ll be getting some back from last year and paying some out this year. Okay, fine, whatever; I’m paying less than $100, you’ll get your money, stop hitting me. I’m not quite ready to throw tea in the harbour over this.
According to my dictionary “tax” comes from the Latin “taxare,” which means “to censure, charge, compute.” Those don’t quite seem like synonyms unless ancient Roman officials came to your house, worked out your taxes, shouted at you for a while for getting it all wrong and then charged you for doing it. Which isn’t that difficult to picture.
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