Showing posts with label taxes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label taxes. Show all posts

Sunday, March 30, 2014

A letter from Hobbes

My small concern with the New Mexico Department of Revenue worries me for no good reason. I am simply a person who, well, worries.

But the other issue is that this comes on the heels of the death of my mother. Among the many things that astonished me was the vast number of forms that had to be filled out afterwards…and the amount of misinformation that comes from seemingly knowledgeable sources. We were told, for instance, that we had to phone the happy folks at Social Security to tell them my mother had passed and to find out where we should mail a copy of her death certificate.

Forty-five minutes waiting on hold later, I learned that there is no such requirement so long as the funeral home staff has notified the agency by electronic means. Which they had done. Which meant I had wasted my 45 minutes.

So it is that the letter from the tax people looms particularly large for me. It is a symbol for the System…

Not exactly Hobbes' Leviathan, but dreadfully near, and rumbling on…all seeing yet not seeing…

Perceiving everyone. Believing all to be in error or in sin. Crushing the unrighteous beneath its armored treads.

When, in fact, it alone is unrelieved in its ignorance.

Minor things...death and taxes

Small things have troubled me for the past few days. I've got tax troubles. The state of New Mexico is refusing to process my return. On what grounds I cannot understand. As near as I can make out from the (somewhat ominous) letter they've sent me, I think they think I am no longer a resident of the state.

But why? My correct address is on the return.

I fear it may be because I use a New England-based accountant and they assume that if he is in New Hampshire, I must be too.

Ironic. One of New Mexicans' fondest complaints is that ignorant Easterners don't realize that we are part of the United States of America.

Now we have the reverse. I am here. But the New Mexican government declines to believe it is so.

I have sent a copy of the letter to my accountant. I will let you know what we learn in due time.