Taxable Income
The hoopla of the Holiday Season has now come and gone.
Cash in the bank to pay for that spree is nigh overdrawn!
Just when I thought I was free from financial strain,
A packet arrived from the IRS hinting that it's tax time again!
I'll bet the feller who wrote the instructions is still grinning,
As we common folk try to figure it out with our brains a-spinning!
My learned wife is smarter than I but she couldn't help me any.
The consarned thing may as well have been written in Afghanistani!
Although the intracacies of the system I don't quite understand,
With my trusty calculator, records and sharpened pencil in hand,
I attack the puzzling task hoping that I can prevail,
Preparing it to their satisfaction, thereby avoiding jail!
Double checking my figures and searching for deductions,
I can find no legal way to come up with any further reductions.
I stare in dismay at the 'taxable income' on line twenty-seven!
Alas, again this year there'll be no manna from heaven!
With astute pencil-whipping, withheld taxes still come up short.
I may have to mortgage the house to send funds with my report!
Another tax year has ended and again they've bled my dry.
As Abe Lincoln said, "It hurts too much to laugh and I'm too old to cry!"
Robert L. Hinshaw, CMSgt, USAF, Retired
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Copyright © Robert L. Hinshaw | Year Posted 2012
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