Newsletter Publication 66
Compared to the 6,871 pages of the Internal Revenue Code, the 378-page IRS Publication 4491, VITA/TCE Training Guide is a walk in the park if you are into that sort of thing. It is, admittedly, a rocky walk in the park — the kind that leaves a person numb, thinking only in numbers and technicalities, and wondering if he might ever feel human emotion again.
Even so, many thousands of Americans with a community-minded streak and a knack for suffering have spent their last few weeks digging through Publication 4491, learning about the details of the nation’s individual income tax system, and brushing up their tax preparation skills ahead of a certification test. In the coming months, the fruits of this labor will benefit scores of low-to-moderate-income American taxpayers, whose returns will be prepared at no cost by a small army of volunteers in the IRS’s Volunteer Income Tax Assistance program.
Preparing for a role in that small army, I have spent the last several Saturday afternoons immersed in Publication 4491 and its companion Publication 4012 (the Internal Revenue Service has been accused of many things, but whimsical naming schemes are not among them, and they eliminated the easier form 1040EZ five years ago just to be extra clear on the matter).
“What could possibly drive any reasonable person to spend time on something like this?” I asked myself last week. It was a Friday night in one of the most exciting cities in the world and I was deep in an online lesson on the differences in tax between the two tiers of Railroad Retirement income.
We love to hate the tax code, but there is something beautiful and deeply satisfying about it. Beyond seven thousand pages of statute and loopholes for corporations and loopholes for the very wealthy and seemingly nefarious opacity and the problem of TurboTax lobbyists keeping forms intentionally complex so that Americans will be forced to pay for their software, there is a subtle utopianism. The IRS has a reputation for stodginess, but it is bold — brave, even — to capture a whole year of American life on paper forms.
Births, deaths, career changes, moves, retirements, and graduations all factor in on lines numbered in Helvetica. Theoretically, a person or computer applying the correct rules can produce from this information a single number — rounded to the nearest whole dollar — representing tax liability for an entire year. Life does not fit easily into boxes, but why should we not at least do our to best force it — to make order out of bedlam?
“The tax code, once you get to know it,” wrote David Foster Wallace in The Pale King, “embodies all the essence of human life: greed, politics, power, goodness, charity.” Just like a night out at the theater, tax law makes us think about the human condition. It is not the opera. There are no screaming maidens and no arias on a tax return, but The Marriage of Figaro contains no mention of the standard deduction for married taxpayers who file a joint return, so maybe they are even.
The essence of human life on form 1040 can look a bit spare. Practicing for the Volunteer Income Tax Assistance certification test involves preparing tax returns for a series of fictional taxpayers, which feels both intimate and oddly distant.
Nancy is single and lives alone. Her mother, Maxine, lives in another city and Nancy provides over half her support. Theirs is a compelling story of love and geography and money, but the question is ultimately one of Nancy’s filing status.
Anne Santos is a part-time student at Baruch College. She has her own apartment in midtown Manhattan for which she pays $450/month. I would like to know who her apartment broker is and whether she has her own toilet. The preparation material is more concerned about the taxation of her credit card debt cancelation.
Jeff and Amy had a messy divorce. They don’t talk and Amy is still saddled with their no-good twenty-something son who made $2,500 all year as a tattoo artist even though his parents paid for his perfectly good education. One wonders how poor Amy wound up surrounded by these mediocre men, but the question at hand concerns changes to tax liability if the divorce was finalized before January 1, 2019 (refer to Publication 504, Divorced or Separated Individuals).
A few hours before the publication of today’s Newsletter, some Ned Flanders character somewhere in America e-filed the first return for tax year 2022. It was probably a dull moment, but I like to imagine a “first gift of Christmas” scenario in which President Biden showed up moments later at their door with a giant cardboard check like one of those Publishers Clearing House television advertisements. If there is no giant check and no presidential visit, surely the most proactive American should get something. A mid-level postal appointment, perhaps, or a toast at some IRS processing center Christmas party, if they even have those.
Of course, we do not associate the Internal Revenue Service with celebration. There are only 18 exclamation points in all of Publication 4491, an average of one exclamation point every 21 pages. Even the words, “HAVE A GREAT TAX SEASON” on the back of a package of supplemental materials given to me by a local nonprofit have no punctuation at all.
For my part, I never considered the possibility of having a great tax season. I have had great weeks, great years, and great academic quarters, but the idea of tax filing seasons as a subdivision of my one wild and precious life is new to me. I can see the appeal, though. There is a beauty in knowing that this morning, as the sun rose over a new tax filing season and the IRS fired up some ancient mainframe, a non-zero number of people who spend their lives bringing order and sweet, sweet numbered forms to the total depravity of the human condition rose from their beds and exclaimed(!), “Today’s the day.”
Distractions
Things I have been reading, watching, and listening to this week.
The Pale King by David Foster Wallace.
A 550-page work of fiction on the employees of the Internal Revenue Service Regional Examination Center in Peoria, Illinois circa 1985 may not sound compelling from the jump, but it is nevertheless the sort of book that can work its way into the back of a person’s consciousness until they suddenly find themselves thinking a little too much about the tax system.
There is no traditional plot. Nobody is exactly sure if there was supposed to be. The Pale King was David Foster Wallace’s last work. He arranged the unfinished manuscript shortly before his death, leaving a friend to put the work in order. The result is, as the author described it, “tornadic.” There are dozens of swirling —and occasionally intersecting — vignettes about everything from the traffic snarl at the IRS Processing Center curb cut on the fictional Self Storage Parkway in suburban Peoria to the Grand Rapids childhood of one manager.
The Pale King is not so much about taxes as it is about the strange agonies and indignities of regular American life. Much of the book may be about boredom, but it is never boring.
“New Ottawa County Board Ends Racial Diversity Office, Hires Trump Favorite” by Yue Stella Yu in Bridge Michigan.
It has been a difficult few weeks in Ottawa County, Michigan, where I grew up. Ottawa County government, for as long as I can remember, was one of those governments in which things just sort of… worked. There was relatively little drama and little time in the spotlight for the county government. The County Commission was rarely in the news, but the roads were maintained well, the elections were administered fairly, and the county park system was second to none. The first time that I had COVID, the Health Department checked in with me every day.
A few years ago, I took to calling Ottawa County “God’s Country” in a lighthearted gesture to its conservative religious history. Recently, though, things have gotten a little less light. “Thank you for returning Ottawa County to God!” said one speaker at a recent meeting of the new County Commission. “There’s a huge revival coming like no one has ever seen. The silent majority is silent no longer.”
And indeed, there has been little in the way of silence as the Commission — now ruled by an insurgent group of far-right activists — has replaced civil servants and changed the inoffensive county motto (“Where you belong”) to the astonishingly tacky, “Where freedom rings.”
On the bright side, God’s Country has some supremely talented reporters. Holland still has its own newspaper, and I have never seen more of the inner workings of Ottawa County government than I have in the last few weeks, even from 600 miles away.