20 January 2019

[Bess Tuggle] - Memoirs of Surviving Children: Tax Time & the IRS

It’s that time of the year, ya’ll.  Put on your big kid Underoos and suck it up.  It’s TAX TIME!

The Fright for the Night.  I’m gonna say it - The ULTIMATE bad word.

INTERNAL REVENUE SERVICE.

I have the utmost respect for everyone that works there.  I promise, ‘cause I don’t want a job that has to put up with folks like me, but I scared ‘em.  I Really, really, REALLY scared ‘em one time!  

IRS employees have a difficult job.  I know tax returns are tough for most of us.  Teach me the rules and we can play fair and square.  When the rules change every year and the instructions are no longer easily available, except online which is a nightmare to read and flip between schedules, all bets are off.  Wish I knew what happened to instructions coming in the mail or available at the local library, but alas, they seem to have disappeared.

One of my tax returns was refused.  Well, not really refused, but I was denied one of my deductions – my oldest son.

When it gets to the point that even C.P.A.’s can’t keep up with the changing rules and regulations we have a problem.  Believe me, I did my own tax returns for years, payroll tax returns for several different businesses that each had their own rules (back in the day, agricultural businesses had a –whole- different system from corporations and LLC’s), Unemployment returns, again for several businesses…  The system completely confounds me now.  They couldn’t –pay- me to go back to college to keep up with this crap.

Anyway, it took hours to get a person on the phone, and even more time to dig through paperwork to prove my first born was actually mine. (*Expletives excluded*)  After claiming him for 10 or 12 years I would have thought it’d be a gimme.  

I finally won my case after asking if I could send Thing 1 to the I.R.S.  If they could raise, feed and cloth him for the allowed deduction, they could have him. 

I didn’t get any takers, but they did allow the deduction.

Chickens!!!

Bess Tuggle


A jack of all trades, Ms. Tuggle has been a Covington resident since the late 70’s. She's been a K-Mart cashier, cabinet builder, vet tech, office manager for a beef cattle ranch and water well company (where she was able to hold benefits for D.A.R.E. and Scouts), a court reporter, business manager, assistant at a private investigation firm, legal assistant, convenience store clerk, landscaper and elementary school substitute teacher.  Her greatest pleasure is being a wife, mother and grandmother.  Her stories are all real, and all names will be withheld to protect the innocent, and also maybe the guilty, depending on the crime & the Statute of Limitations.