Laugh While You Cry on Tax Day

Is there anything to enjoy on the most miserable day of the year?

It's the worst holiday in the universe. Even worse than Arbor Day. Today is the deadline for Americans to file their income taxes.

Reason has a selection of tax-related stories to angry up the blood today. Skim through our selection here.

But perhaps you'd like to chuckle ruefully instead over the terrible reality of America's dysfunctional tax systems. Let's start with Reason TV's videos for tax day. First, can the costs of caring for dragons be written off as a business expense if you use them to overthrow kingdoms?

Hey Cersei, remember you can still count Joffrey as a deduction for your 2013 filing. Maybe that will ease the sting a little bit. The Starks, though; they should probably file for an extension.

And here we have Remy slathering on the irony in a "Crappy" parody of Pharell's latest hit. Remember folks, taxes are the price we pay to live in a "civilized society" that has no earthly idea where the money is actually going:

In the category of "Isn't it funny how stupid Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) is?" here's an old interview with him explaining how paying taxes is voluntary. Laugh to keep from screaming.

Online tax service E-file has a couple of pages listing weird and stupid taxes throughout history and across the world and unusual deductions and tax breaks people are able to claim. Want to know the circumstances where you can deduct a breast implant or apply depreciation to an ostrich? There you go.

Finally, according to the Tax Foundation, Americans won't actually earn enough money to pay for all the taxes the government demands of us until April 21, a week from today. Wait, that's not funny at all.

Comments

[NotAnotherSkippy]

True story of a friend this lovely tax season. This year he decided to file his own taxes. He bought TurboTax and filled in everything. Then he went to submit it and the IRS refused to accept the application electronically. At first the issue was that his wife had a PIN, but he didn't. No worries, you can provide your SSN and last year's AGI and such to verify your identity and get a PIN. So when he called the IRS to complete the process he was surprised after providing his information to receive a terse response along the lines of, "I have been instructed to provide you with the following information: you must consult your last year's return." Nothing more useful than that, and yes it was that ominous.

So a week or two later he had his wife call the IRS, and she got a different agent who finally figured out the problem. It turns out that both filers' names are merged into a single name field electronically in the IRS system. It also turns out that that name field has somewhere around a 30 character limit (based on our counting of the letters in their names). This clipped his last name to its first two letters. Not only did this prevent his filing because of the mismatch, but it also changed his ethnicity.

You see, he is now Mr. "Hu."

Absolutely true story.

[dinkster]

That, is, actually a blessing. The court system systematically misspelled my name in *every* single preceding over the last 15 years. So nothing pops up anywhere on the background check websites.