Tax Warrant

As I'm watching The New Adventures of Old Christine on CBS, or as Steph calls it, The New Adventures of Old Me (because I'm a social mess in public and if you watch Julia Louise Dreyfus in it, that's exactly how I act in public), I get a phone call from my mom. She is a bit panicked and she tells me that a tax warrant was sent to their house for me.

"It says you owe $7,000," she said.

My forehead dampened. My eyes became bloodshot. Dinner lost it's appeal. My CBS comedies just weren't as funny anymore (Well, Two and A Half Men is never funny, but...).

I am not a seedy character when it comes to my taxes, but I am bit absent minded when paying taxes for my business.

Last November, I received a similar letter from the government telling me that I owed $7,068. This was a frightening figure, but realizing my actual sales and a late fee, I went downtown and paid only $18. You think I would've learned my lesson, but no! I didn't. I just kept putting off the whole "paying your taxes" thing. It's so overrated, isn't it? Until you receive this:

No wonder my mom was freaked out. All red text telling me I'm going to rot in tax hell and that I need to contact a sheriff, I mean -- a sheriff? Am I really that bad of a person that I need to contact a sheriff?

After arriving at my parents' house to pick up the letter, I called the Indiana Deptartment of Revenue and was spun in phone circles:

"If you want to know why you have a tax warrant, please press 1. If you want to see how much the pope pays in taxes, please press 2. If you want forms sent to your house by a mule, please press 3. If you want a mug from the Indiana Dept. of Revenue, please press 4..."

It took about ten minutes to finally get a human on the phone and when she picked up, I screamed "Hallelujah" and asked if she was a robot, and she replied, "I don't like Posh Spice, thank you."

Again, I drove all the way downtown, fed the meter and paid my taxes, late again. The warrant was revoked and I can sleep easy. It's just a sick wake-up call, especially when my business only made $11.75 last year. I technically owed $.70, but with my $.02 interest and my late fee...I ended up costing myself $5.72.

Will I do this again? I wrote on my Far Side calendar, from this month until Decemenber "Pay your 2008 sales taxes before Jan.!" just to remind myself to never do this again.

Comments

Anonymous said…
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Anonymous said…
You are so lucky there is no more debtor's prison!