Death to Taxes

Someone was on their way to get their taxes done at H&R Block and I said a little sardonically, "Have Fun!" You know, as you might say to someone with performance anxiety on their way to stage right. Well she says, "My job's easy, their doing the hard work." This makes me think. What makes a job hard. A job can be hard because it involves the moving of very heavy objects. A job can be hard if it takes intense concentration on many things at the same time. and apparently, a job can be hard if it's very very complicated. But to me the hardest kind of job is one you don't know how to do.

Of all the vices with which I am cursed,
ignorance is by far the worst.

I just wrote that. Yeah, just now. But my point is this. Call me callous but there's not one person at H&R Block who I have a heart to pity even now, except the intern. I don't mind hard work. If my body is capable of a physical task, I won't complain to have to do it. In my mind and to my eye, orderly complication adds a sense of beauty to any system. And though I don't know the United States Tax System, I'm under the impression that it's ordered to the extreme. I'm not saying at all that tax professionals don't deserve their wages. I'm not going to pay them. I don't make enough. I'd rather suffer through filing my four W2's each from a different state, than give up a fifth of my federal refund. I'm just saying that I'll never pity the tax professional, even in his busy season. For knowledge is his business and knowledge is all he needs. Knowledge is power. Truly said. I pity the ignorant, and self-pity is a sweet sweet sickness.