04-10-2002

Commentary: Love of the 1040 tax form

Host: JOHN YDSTIE Time: 8:00-9:00 PM

JOHN YDSTIE, host:

With April 15th only five days away, procrastinators across the country are digging under their beds for medical receipts, searching for the right forms on the IRS Web site and trying to remember just how many bags of old clothes they donated to the Salvation Army. Not commentator Bob Parks.

BOB PARKS:

I love the 1040. I love that you have to decide whether your car has been used as a hearse when adding up small business write-offs on Schedule C. I love that fur-bearing animals are listed in the same category as laptop computers when calculating depreciation on that form. I love that my 1099 income is reported in the box that rubs shoulders with one reserved for something called excess golden parachute payments. If you accept the idea that you are what you make, then this all-encompassing two-page document and its 250 subforms reflect every human circumstance and foresee every life that touches them.

When the 1040 was first issued in 1914, you could only take casualty deductions for fires, storms and shipwrecks. Now they include sonic booms, car accidents, earthquakes, mine cave-ins and volcanic eruptions. Like six million other taxpayers, I prepare electronically. This means that for about three hours I zip through hundreds of Web-based flow charts about my family and our income. Alimony? No. Gambling income? Just a few well drinks in Reno. Stock options? Oh, God, not anymore. Tax shelter firms? None. Generation-skipping trusts? Well, unlikely.

Every year this mega-form becomes a sort of artifact that ties me to a bigger world, and filling out the Schedule C for my home business is a terrific list of 400 other small businesses. It's like a high school career day questionnaire: barbers, tortilla makers, podiatrists, candle store owners. If you ever wanted to know the daily concerns of someone in a completely different job, here's how to do it. Just log on to one of the Internet tax services, fill it out, don't pay and then don't hit send. On TurboTax, for example, I made up whole characters and watched as my Monopoly money rose and fell at the corner of the screen. I became a fabulously wealthy former CEO of a former Big Five accounting firm. His excess golden parachute payments--those are the fees that big shots get when they leave a job--drew horrendous penalties. In another scenario, I was a jet-setting notary public who used a herd of small hairless animals on a three-year depreciation schedule as a shelter firm. That guy ended up getting a fat refund.

YDSTIE: Writer Bob Parks lives in Sterling, Massachusetts.

ROBERT SIEGEL (Host): You're listening to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News.

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