What taxation

W2, or the tax form is one document that gets shoved in between the grocery lists till it is the 11th hour. Come April 15th and everyone’s Facebook wall is filled with updates about how much they hate doing taxes. Frankly, filing for taxes is worse than doing laundry, a task so unchallenging that you postpone it till you run out of underwear and are compelled to wear mismatched socks. In one out of my four years of tax filing, I have actually missed the deadline. It is something that keeps sitting like a log in your work schedule and you never want to get started.


However, things get somewhat rosy once you are done with your taxes. As a student, you pay a meager amount as taxes and get most of it as returns. The same continues once you graduate from school but are still on OPT. Last year I actually made a trip to the North after getting my tax returns. This year I was hoping for something similar, wondering whether to go back again when I get tax returns. Things changed and I had to come back, which also meant I needed to finish my taxes a month before the deadline. It took me 2 days to find my W2 hidden in the hinterlands of somewhere and then another 2 days to figure out what I am supposed to do. I was still hoping I would make a small fortune from the tax return money and fund myself a trip for later when I realized with a broken heart that not just do I not get any refunds, but I owe the IRS some 1,000 bucks.

Don’t even ask me about the rationale behind it. Not that I was too interested in listening to the reasoning, given that I was left without a job, without any earning, without someone to fall back on, without any self-esteem, and without a trip. IRS could take all my money, all the social security taxes I paid and got no benefits in return, my savings, my ancestral property, and more if needed, and kiss my big you-know-what !!! No prizes for guessing, I was livid.

If only I could claim the sexy bartender I met at one of the bars as a dependent. If only I could claim buying a new car or a new house. If only I was dating an IRS gal. If only I had carefully saved those receipts of furniture donated to Goodwill. If only there were tax-deductible lay-off packages. If only I was retiring. Or getting myself a brand new wife. Or a job. The possibilities of saving on taxes seem endless now. If only ….