Wrath of Lamb April 26/10

Income taxes are due this Friday, April 30th, and that reminds me of a story. You ever have a brilliant plan blow up in your face? When I was a much younger man, in my early twenties, there was no such thing as electronic filing and, so you had to actually fill out the forms, and send them off via snail mail.

There was also no such thing as 'Fast cash back' or anything like that. It took 6-8 weeks to process your tax return. Well, one year, I knew I was getting a refund, and I really needed the money... and quick. A friend of mine told me about something ingenius. He said 'what you do, is you fill out the French-language tax forms. Because even though it's federal, each province has it's own offices that process the returns. Because there are so few French people in BC, the French forms get done really fast, because there are staff on hand that only deal with the French ones'.

Brilliant!

I did my taxes, but because I don't speak or understand a single word of French, I transferred all the info over onto a French form. Bam! Two weeks later I got my refund. It worked! I couldn't believe it. I felt so smart. But then something started to happen. For the next year, every single piece of information that came to me from the government was in French. I didn't know if I was being drafted, or I was picked for jury duty or what. I had no idea what any of my mail was telling me.

I filled out my taxes in English after that.