It’s getting to be that time again – to render unto the Internal Revenue Service the ransom necessary to keep ourselves out of jail.

I try not to crab about paying taxes, but as the former TV host Arthur Godfrey (or his press agent) once put it: “I am proud to be paying taxes in the United States. The only thing is, I could be just as proud for half the money”.

Due to my competence level and the desire to avoid spending time in the stir, I don’t actually “do” my taxes. For years, they’ve been “done” for me by a person named Gayle whom I have never met, nor spoken with. I communicate with Gayle via her internet address and, so far, she has steadfastly kept me free from doing redemption at Shawshank prison, and since she has access to my accounts, I, of course, live in the blind hope that that isn’t her personal place of residence.

Gayle can’t “do” it all, though. All she gets to work with are the sums I give her. I myself play a important role in the “doing” of the taxes: the Preliminary Paperwork. I seem to be very good at it. It seems obvious to me that one of my previous lives was spent as a gerbil. Unfortunately, maybe anyone who believes that anything-worth-doing-is-worth-doing-to-excess shouldn’t be allowed to do paperwork! The role of all those stapled-together piles of paper are to prove that the numbers I enter on my “packet” to Gayle are the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, but sadly, included in that mountain of paper should be the receipts for the rental of the warehouse to store them in.)

I haven’t been accepted to appear on Dancing With the Stars yet, but I still hope I’m qualified to offer you a valuable tax dancing tip. The IRS says you only have to save your personal receipts for three years. DON’T YOU BELIEVE IT. Save them for at least ten years. Or even twenty if you happen to own a large storage facility.

And here’s why. Remember that the closer your deductions get to zero, the less you pay in income tax. Regrettably, the IRS has a different definition for the term “deductible” than I do. As far as I’m concerned, everything I spend is “deductible” from my income. But our Internal Revenue Service doesn’t seem to agree. They don’t seem able to consider Cause-and-Effect relationships.

Consider your Medical deduction, for example. You are free to deduct the cost of your broken leg, but NOT the cost of the skis, your Snoqualmie day pass or the ski lift fees that were the direct cause of the broken leg effect. Now, is that fair, I ask? Certainly not.

Last year, I managed to pay for 3 dental implants thus qualifying for a Dental deduction. Doesn’t it seem reasonable that I should also deduct the annual costs of all those Snickers bars and Costco Macadamia Nut Clusters which directly caused the need for the deduction?

There’s always hope, though. Someday, the tax collectors will surely realize their ineptitude. They will understand that the deductions they’re so proud of need to become more project-oriented and user-friendly. Today, you can deduct the cost of getting an energy-efficient hot water heater. But in the future, maybe you can include the annual cost of your mortgage payments, because why would you need an energy-efficient hot water heater if you didn’t have a house to put it in? Makes sense? It’s no wonder Mr. Spock found earthlings to be illogical — he was surely working on his Form 1040 at the time.

In the distant future, once the IRS comes to its senses, you’ll be happy you saved all those receipts for 10 or 20 years, because – what if the new rules are RETROACTIVE? We’ll be rich! The treasury department will owe US money! The only troublesome downside is that the government will be reduced to living in poverty. It will be forced to scratch around to make ends meet – just like the rest of us do. Then, if any of us happen to get audited, the script might run along these lines . . . .

Auditor: “Mrs. Ford, thank you for neatly stapling together in date order for the past 10 years all your cash register slips from Costco and from Safeway, but I see here a serious discrepancy. Our records show that on May 5th of last year, you did forthwith purchase in its entirety one dozen eggs at Safeway for $1.85. The cost per egg was 15 cents. But our records further show that on that same day, Safeway was featuring a sale for cartons containing 18 eggs for $2.16 and thus, each egg therein was individually priced at 12 cents per unit, a savings of 3 cents per egg. That 3 cent per egg difference indicates to us that you did deliberately and with malice aforethought squander 54 cents of the Tax You Owe us on Line 37 of your Form 1040. How do you explain this?”

Fortunately, because of my foolproof Don’t-Leave-Behind-Any-Surviving-Receipts formula, I would be able to respectfully explain: “Mr. Auditor Sir, I wish to offer into evidence this note presented to me by the Safeway Store Manager, indicating that my product of interest was sold out so he was attaching for my future shopping enjoyment, a rain-check for one carton of 18 eggs – either white or brown – but only from chickens, not ducks or ostriches, and maybe not cage-free, or actually fresh, but generously priced at $2.16.”

I hope all this has inspired you to get to work on the receipts you need to “do” your taxes. I always forget how to get started and thus, was relieved to see a folder on my desk labeled “Priority Action Items”. Regretfully, it only contains last year’s losing lottery tickets, a jury summons from 2017, and a recipe for beer-battered fried avocado wedges. I’ll file it away till next year.

I guess I’ll just get started on Quicken in order to reconcile the last 10 months of my accounts. Which reminds me, why do my debits and credits expect to be “reconciled” when, obviously, I’m not a marriage counselor? How am I supposed to resolve their differences for them? I’m just a Preliminary Paperwork Tax Expert.