Ode to My Tax Consultant
Oh, beacon of my financial voyage, bluff counselor, stalwart blond charmer, I am writing to inform you that despite carrying out your instructions faithfully to the very last detail of your astute instructions, this is it; the end has come. My tiny commercial ship has foundered on the rocks, shuddered fearfully, and will go down the moment payment comes due for all those back taxes you just notified me I owe. What a surprise! What an unlooked-for unpleasantness! What a bitch! But saddest of all, it means goodbye. I will no longer be able to afford your services, which you marshaled with such sophistication to get those eight or nine fields on my income tax forms just right.
Atrium of my heart, I shall not hold forth long. Keenly aware as I am of my blighted ability to remunerate even the precious time it would require you to read this brief note, I must appeal to that charitable nature of yours, that boundless generosity, that inimitable élan to grant me the few moments I require to voice the flutter of perplexity, the unrest of one wayward thought, adulterating the pure regret our imminent parting of ways has cast over me: Had I not hired you to secure my finances? Yea, boost perchance prosperity for one Ms. McCutcheon? Your insouciance at this last queer setback, which has me scrambling like two cats in a sack, causes me to think some other agenda may have fixed your bright eye, an agenda that remains hidden to me. Perhaps your waist-high brass elephants, guardians of your majestic office doors, trunks lifted to trumpet, have some tale to tell, knew I but how to tease it forth.
Yet shall I ever be grateful to you. All my life I have proclaimed—somewhat arrogantly—that I was one to look monsters in the eye. That there were any monsters to eyeball was the fact I adroitly dodged. Your timely tackle gave me the jolt I needed. I’m stopped now and staring my monster down. That is release. That is exhilaration. That, broadly speaking, is freedom. For that I thank you. Every man, woman, and child should at some point in their lives get the chance to stare their monster down. For me it took a he-man like you to sync my fuzzy brain with my personal monster—the gaping discrepancy between my indulgences and my means—and it has made me so happy. I am finally in the here and now and I shall always bear gratitude in my heart towards you for that. And yet, I’m ruined. What about that?
But I must recap to gather my wits. Forgive my indulgence. I know your time is money even if mine is not.
Bucked from my tedious desk job in 2004 and determined to embark on a path I considered grand, though rocky—setting up my own little business—I searched for a crack tax consultant to arrange the thorny financial details the fearsome transition entailed. You were recommended. I requested representation, fully aware that not all who sought received. I was accepted! Ta-da! My most pressing need at the outset was to get my business plan approved by a certified something-or-other in order to qualify for the generous payout the government was advancing at that time to professionals setting up their own businesses. That was you, too. Bingo! You were the right guy. I was cooking with Crisco.
With a cheerful flourish you signed the government form approving the business plan I submitted to you, a neat booklet I had worked on for weeks. As a result I was awarded €2,500 a month for the next six months—the six-month government-subsidized honeymoon of my new business. There was no doubt in my mind it was worth the €1,000 you eventually charged me for that signature. I was launched on my own little business. And though little, it was on the move. Creeping along. I was getting business. Things were fine. I was making twice what I used to get as the indentured employee tethered to a desk for so many hours a week, stricken with the humiliation no dog endures—having to pretend not just industry but interest. That was behind me now. Things had indeed turned around.
Yet, the course of my new financial life in these uncharted waters remained uncertain despite my employment of you, oh wise counselor. In fact, your participation lent an atmospheric influence that seemed to keep the waters rather choppy. I did everything you said: I opened that second bank account; I sent you a meticulous record of my modest business expenses and intake five days after close of business each month; I signed all the unfinished income tax forms you presented me whenever you called me in to your offices to do so; I transferred €100 plus €19 VAT to your account every month, a strategy you so considerately suggested to make paying you so much more convenient for me. Yet many mysteries developed, for example, when I was supposed to pay my income tax.
That first year, because the tax office didn’t know how much I was earning, it didn’t know how much to tax me, so it didn’t tax me at all. Aware I was going to get hit at some unknown time for all the taxes I owed for 2004, I began to save as I never saved before. The balance grew and grew—€14,000, €22,000, €27,000, but I continued to sweat. When would it be enough? I didn’t dare buy myself new socks.
The time I expected to be called on to pay up, March 2005, came and went. No word from the tax office, no word from you, my dear. Nothing whatsoever happened that year. I teetered under my unaccustomed accumulation of wealth, praying I wouldn’t crack, race out, and buy myself a superfine string of real pearls, jumbo size, a heavy-duty professional quality surround-sound stereo system, or a set of Meissen porcelain, or all three—things that were looming dangerously within my illusory means.
In 2006, I continued to suffer from solitary confinement madness treatment, until I believed I and my mounting ten thousands had been forgotten. But no, the hunter had me in his sights all along and it was not Tina Turner’s love gun he was aiming at me. In March I got hit like a clay pigeon for my 2004 taxes and my savings burst apart. This is not a complaint. That’s what the money was there for. I am proud to say it was more than adequate and I was relieved the waiting was over. What dealt me the dastardly blow, Liebling, was the buckshot I got from you. Instead of the modest refund I fondly thought I might expect from the ample payments I had been making to you all along for doing what I naively thought was nothing, you informed me that €1,250 was still due for additional services rendered. Since you did not itemize your bill, I was at liberty to ponder what those additional services might be with all the imaginative faculties at my disposal.
Another mystery to unsettle me on days I was savvy enough to be wary were the quarterly payments the Finanzamt finally exacted from me. That healthy development occurred in 2006. What a relief. No longer did I have to worry about keeping a mountain of money at the ready for some unknown but enormous bill coming at some unexpected and always bad time to pay a year’s worth of income tax. I would pay out what I owed every three months and be done with it. Great idea. It didn’t work, though. The quarterly installments were never right. They were too low at first, and the bills I got hit with to make up the difference were truly unpleasant surprises because I had moderated my strategy of saving up piles of money to pay to the finance office at just any old time and had in fact begun to invest my earnings in encyclopedias and ergonomic office furniture, if not in pearls. After two years of yanking the quarterly payments painfully upward, the tax office sent me a hefty refund, saying I had paid too much. I called to discuss. The tax lady took pains to explain arithmetic to me, which instruction I did not need. I knew how to add and subtract; I wanted to know why they were adding and subtracting those particular numbers. On that point, the phone lady could not help me. As could be easily guessed, I got slapped with an extra heavy levy the following quarter for not paying that money. A busybody might ask what you were doing all this time, sweetheart, and I have to confess that I don’t know, although your bills continued to provide me with proof that you steadily performed additional services.
It’s 2009 now and things have gotten really rotten, not just for me but for lots of people. Things for me, though, didn’t really have to get so bad. I was financially stable, despite the fact that my business and investments had shrunk. Yes, things were really awful, but didn’t have to be quite so awful for me.
By the time February, 2009, rolled around, you, oh heel of my foot, put together the manifold fields of information that make up my 2007 income tax return statement from the receipts, invoices, and bank statements I had sent you by the fifth of every month back in 2007 so you could get to it right away; and you saw—not to your chagrin from the tone in your voice—that once again I had better have some money “auf der hohen Kante.” Yes, you trotted out that phrase again, although this time I thought I could not be hearing correctly. My quarterly tax payments had been adjusted upward again and yet again. What could the problem be this time? Ahh, you responded cheerily, my profits were very high for 2007. How terrible, I groused, and you … chuckled. And, you hinted, if I earned the same amount in 2008 … I did, I assured you, something you should have known because you had been in possession of the information for over a year. Ahh, you warned cheerily, then the tax office would want money for that year, too. How much? I asked. Sixteen thousand Euros. I drew breath. For 2007 and 2008? I queried, somewhat strangled. For 2007, you replied heartily; for 2008 it would be that much again. Thirty-two thousand Euros? Yes. I see. And when might I have to pay that? In six to eight weeks. I see.
Your bill for the 2007 tax return was higher than usual because of the even more additional services you had had to perform, perhaps due to the intensity of the work, seeing as you seem to have performed it all within forty-five minutes, a challenge for even the most expert tax consultant, no doubt. What that work was remains unclear because, once again, dear heart, you did not itemize the bill. However, at this stage in our relationship, I question whether I should pay you at all. After all, your two-year delay is the cause of my ruin. You see, to pay those back taxes I’ll have to hand over €32,000 from my investments for which I paid in €65,000, scrambling that little nest egg.
And with that, oh slime on the snake—in other words and more affectionately, since we all know snakes only look slimy, my sweet nothing—I am afraid this is adieu. Your tender reflection will inform you, I am confident, that I am leaving you in large part because I have nothing more to give you. Between you and the tax office, I have been ground to dust and I am aware that dust is of no interest to crack tax consultants or their elephantine doorstops. And rather than suffer rejection on top of all these other woes, I am taking leave of you in the subtle form of cancelling my monthly payments of €119.00 to you, something I feel sure it will not take you twenty-four months to discover. And because you will swiftly notice my infidelity, I have fortified myself already for your equally swift response: getting dumped like the sack of rotten potatoes I, after five arduous, hardworking years, have become. Good riddance to me. My dear sir, let me also say, good riddance to you.
Now, about those trumpeting brass elephants so staunchly guarding your doors. In response to my admiring them one sunny afternoon, you said, heck, it was the elephants or nothing. Pardon me? I inquired politely. I wasn’t going to get anything from that client, you enlarged, it was them or nothing. So you took the elephants, brass indeed that has a message to trumpet. The only items I might contribute to your brass collection I got in China, very valuable in their own way, to strengthen the hand and wrist—two brass balls, but you’re already equipped with a pair of those.