The taxpayer – that’s someone who works for the federal government but doesn’t have to take the civil service examination.     ~Ronald Reagan

With spring more or less upon us, why so many furrowed brows in the grocery checkout line? With cottonwoods budding out beside every creek and pool, how come the nervous tics and hangdog expressions? Blame it on the season.

Tax season.

Between now and T-Day, those working stiffs who couldn’t or wouldn’t file early will be scrambling for advantage against an agency not known for either empathy or indulgence. Shoe boxes will be produced, illegible receipts sorted, hair pulled and sleep lost. This in spite of the fact that, thanks to a fortunate calendar glitch, taxpayers have two whole extra days to fret and stew before the ax falls at the witching hour on Apr. 17.

It could be worse, of course. On average, Coloradans surrender about 10 percent of their daily bread to feed government’s hungry maw, ranking 30^th among the various states. New Englanders, by contrast, pay upwards of 12 percent, with Maine and Vermont in a dead heat for dead last at 14 percent and 14.1 percent, respectively.

It could also be much better. In Alaska, which has no state income or sales tax, citizens must share a mere 6.6 percent of their substance with The Man, and every occupant of the Last Frontier gets a fat dividend check each year from the state’s oil-fed permanent fund.

But, whether you pay much or not-quite-as-much, pay you must, and getting square with the Internal Revenue Service has never been more bewildering than it is today. Consider that IRS regulations run to some 8,551,444 words, or more than 11 times the verbiage contained in the King James Bible. Small wonder, then, that, according to IRS statistics, the average taxpayer spends about 13 hours filling out the relatively benign Form 1040. Taken together, that’s about 5.8 billion hours, or roughly 662,000 years of otherwise productive labor.

Still, it’s not as if John and Jane Bloodstone have to navigate those treacherous waters unaided. For starters, the IRS employs well over 100,000 semi-helpful people who manage to answer a whopping 60 percent of the desperate phone calls they receive and dispense accurate information fully 75 percent of the time. Incredibly, some folks are unwilling to stake their financial futures on those odds, which helps explain why people like Evergreen resident Scott Schaus’s wife, Leslie, are among the nation’s most-harried professionals, these days.

“She’s a certified public accountant, and right now she’s working 18 hours a day, 7 days a week,” smiles Scott, an electrical contractor. He’s smiling because, no matter how busy Leslie gets, he’ll never have to do his own taxes. That’s definitely something to smile about, but it doesn’t mean Scott remains unscarred by this cruelest of seasons. “When she’s swamped, my job is to run the kids around, do the shopping, cook the meals – pretty much everything else that has to be done – and still try to run my own business. It gets pretty busy, but it’s only for a month or so.”

But Leslie’s good office has its rewards, and not just the financial kind. By way of thanks to the mountain area’s valiant men and women in blue (pinstripe), the Evergreen Players are offering a buy one, get one free deal to all tax preparers. To qualify, they need only flash a business card and a completed Form 199EP with accompanying certified copy of their 2005 Schedule G proof-of-exhaustion affidavit. In triplicate.

Alas, not everyone can be married to a CPA, and that means spending 13 hours, give or take, alone with a calculator, a blizzard of sticky-notes and a throbbing headache. To make matters worse, some unscrupulous cyber-fiends have been exploiting the public distress by masquerading as the IRS and phishing online. According to a presumably legitimate e-mail from the agency’s Denver office, sham e-mails direct punch-drunk taxpayers to sham IRS websites where they’re asked to provide real personal information like social security numbers and bank account passwords.

“Don’t be fooled by these shameless scam artists,” cautions dashing IRS chief Mark Everson, clearly outraged that a citizen’s honestly provided financial information would be used against them.

Such abuses bug Evergreen resident and information technology business owner Robb Lanier, too. In 1997, after paying his taxes in full and on time, Lanier got a bill from the IRS for $20,000 in late fees.

“I had all kinds of proof that my payment wasn’t late,” Lanier says. “I even had the cancelled check that they cashed before it was even due. I must have made dozens of calls to different people at the IRS, but as a private citizen, they wouldn’t respond to me at all and refused to hear me out. When they started charging interest on it, I finally had to get a lawyer and he was able to get it all straightened out, but I have to wonder how many people can’t afford a lawyer and wind up just paying money they don’t owe because they’re afraid of the IRS.”

Brrr! April can be a chilly season, regardless of the weather.

“My best advice,” Lanier says, “would be pay on time, keep excellent records, and don’t let even the smallest mistake ride. If you don’t stay on top of things, it could cause huge problems later.”

To learn more about today’s people-friendly Internal Revenue Service, visit www.irs.gov/faqs/index.html. To take your chances on the IRS helpline, call 800-829-1040

 Taxation with representation ain’t so hot either.     ~Gerald Barzan