Taxes, Death and Other Certainties

With a nod to Ben Franklin’s famous quote, tax season is the universal equalizing experience. In my father’s case, this was the first time he didn’t prepare his own paperwork. After my badgering him for oh, about 5 years, he finally agreed to have a trained expert do the returns. Since AARP sponsors a free consulting service for seniors at the local library, we went there for what I thought would be a quick chat. I gathered every possible piece of paper in his apartment that said 1099 or DIV or “important for your taxes.” To his credit, he had attempted to calculate everything on an Excel spreadsheet. However, as we found out today, it’s essential to enter commas, not periods – for instance, the amount of $34,000 is different from $34.00.

We got a lucky break with the tax specialist. She is a nice Jewish girl originally from New York, and her own mother lived at Dad’s retirement village for 21 years. She calmly organized the multiple copies of the same statements, the mutilated records, and the documents with food stains. She asked Sid what his former profession was, he said “electrical engineer”, she smiled and said “oh I could tell.” Apparently all retired engineers make many copies – just in case, you know. She plugged all the data into the amazing government software, muttering a bit, and told us there was a glitch. The computer kept trying to add my mother, even though she’s out of the picture. I explained that Mom periodically shows up to mess with us; she probably wanted a piece of the action. Did the tax lady think this was nuts? Not at all. She shared that her dead mother turns the lights on and off in her home (note to Cindy – sound familiar?)

Two and a half hours later, we had final results that were quite shocking to me, but Dad took it all in stride. He still has money in the bank to pay his bills for at least a year. Also, if the residents go broke, rent is reduced to whatever income is available – some of the centenarians live there for free. After a recovery nap, off we went to a Purim celebration to have kosher cocktails and rattle noisemakers.

I already did my own taxes with TurboTax; now I can spend more time with my father. That’s a life refund, better than anything from the IRS.