How to File Your Taxes FOR FREE in 2022: Simple Instructions for the Stressed-out Taxpayer

Listen up, babies. We’ve been dancing around the issue of taxes for a while now, and it’s time we got to it. Yes, we’ve explained the importance of taxes as a fee for membership in civilization. We’ve told you why you should file your taxes ASAP. And we’ve even told you about that time the IRS audited me!

It’s time to face the beast head-on. It is our sacred duty, as your duly appointed Bitches, to take you through this unpleasantness step by step.

Yea, though you walk through the valley of the shadow of income tax, you shall fear no audits; for We art with you; Our gifs and Our snark they comfort you.

-The Book of the Bitches, 3:7-9
Read More
My Taxes Are a Little, uh, Creative. What's My Risk of Being Audited?

My Taxes Are a Little, uh, Creative. What’s My Risk of Being Audited?

Enough time has probably passed for me to admit to playing fast and loose with the truth in some very old tax returns. But let’s drape this whole conversation in a veil of hypotheticality to preserve our modesty.

THIS ARTICLE DEALS IN HYPOTHETICALS, I SAY!

MY FAN FICTION NOVEL HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH ONE DIRECTION, I SAY! NOTHING!

As all liars will tell you when caught, I (hypothetically) had great reasons for lying. I was (hypothetically) a new graduate during the worst part of the Great Recession, cobbling together freelance jobs to afford a gruel made of boxed mac and cheese thinned with water and Goya packets. I was (hypothetically) hanging onto adult independence by my fingernails. And my fingernails were notoriously hypothetically thin and weak from my high-sodium gruel diet!

This was pretty much how my first tax return after college went…

KITTY:
I made $18,000 last year.

IRS:
Awesome, give us $3,000 of it.

KITTY:
That can’t be right.

IRS:
It is.

KITTY:
Wh— Bu— I live in one of the most expensive cities in America. I can barely pay rent and put food in my cupboards. The unemployment rate for young people is almost 20%, for fuck’s sake! Surely you wouldn’t charge a flat tax rate on someone so desperate?

IRS:
We totally would.

KITTY:
Teach me, dear creature, how to think and speak.
Lay open to my earthly gross conceit,
smothered in errors, feeble, shallow, weak,
the folded meaning of your words’ deceit.
Against my soul’s pure truth why labour you
to make it wander in an unknown field?
Are you a god? Would you create me now?
Transform me, then, and to your power I’ll yield.
But if I am that I am, then well I know
I do not have three thousand dollars, bro,
Nor to your purse no homage do I owe.

IRS:
Ma’am, will that be check or money order?

Read More
Taxes: Your Annual Fee for Membership in Civilization

Taxes: Your Annual Fee for Membership in Civilization

While I would never presume to contradict the inimitable Ron Swanson, he left out half the lesson. Sure, the guv’mint takes a percentage of your money in taxes. But it’s not all doom and gloom and stolen lunches! For as they say, “There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch,” and those dastardly G-men actually give us a useful thing or two in exchange for our taxes.

So listen up, kids! Your days of hating taxes are about to come to… a middle!

Read More