The complete history of the Manly Tax Service (as I remember it): A tale of tyranny

Chapter 1: The early years

Every now and then, one of Mom's older tax customers will mention her dad, Grandpa Coder. "Bob'd help me out," one farmer has chuckled. "If the bill was gonna be too much, he'd say 'well, you had a bull die here,' or something like that."

For 40-odd years (the real number is unclear, but according to the verbal histories I've heard, it's in the 40-range) Grandpa prepared income tax returns for customers. As I've heard it, Mom and her siblings pitched in when they were young children. Grandpa was a friendly cuss and knew most everybody in the county, so his little business developed quite a following.

Chapter 2: The peaceful transition of powers

As grandpa aged, Mom started to take over the tax business. When he became frail with ill health, Mom took over more and more of the business, eventually taking care of all of Grandpa's clients and splitting the money with him.

After he died, Bob's work became Mom's. She bought ads in the paper every year for the newly-named Manly Tax Service. Most of my grade school teachers sent manilla envelopes full of financial documents home with me in the spring, so Mom could prepare their tax returns. There were many days in the spring when Mom would get off work in town, then spend the rest of the night (until 9 or 10 p.m. sometimes) buried behind mounds of paperwork at the kitchen table.

Chapter 3: A family affair

My very first job was as a filing and copying clerk for the Manly Tax Service. My brother's, too. And my sister's. When we were 10(ish) we'd just pass the job along. When we graduated high school and moved away, Dad took over the busy.

When we built our new house, Mom moved the work from the kitchen table into an office. We first bought a computer so she could do taxes on it — it saved her a tremendous amount of time. The home office evolved to include a copy machine, a printer, a filing closet, all the things you'd expect to find at H&R Block. But smaller and cheaper.

Chapter 4: Service with a smile

I'll be honest. I couldn't tell you what a 1040 is.

When customers come to see Mom, some of them bring boxfuls of records covering information ranging from gas royalties and retirement to cattle feed (and even the money earned by turning in recycled cans. Cheating on taxes really isn't an American tradition.)

If I can't understand my simple, one-income tax returns, I can certainly see how some folks don't know what to do with their paperwork. Mom doesn't know all of the rules, either, but she has a lot of experience and knows where to look.

Mom is the friendliest person I know. She's hardly met a stranger, and if she has, they probably knew Grandpa and she's glad to talk to them. She knows enough about tax laws to always get people the best (legal) deal possible. She gives advice. For her elderly customers, she makes housecalls, bringing packets of papers to someone not much able to come pick it up themselves.

Mom charges a lot less than H&R Block would. And her customers know they have somebody they can count on. Mom's spent 20 years — and Grandpa spent decades before that — taking care of hundreds of families in town.

Chapter 5: Conclusions

I think back to my childhood. Every spring, tax season dominated a huge chunk of our lives. It was how my parents paid for our family vacations and how they make money to make extra mortgage payments. They bought me my first BB gun with money made doing taxes. It was where I earned my first spending money.

For several decades, my family has put forth an enormous entrepreneurial effort. That's what it's taken just for hundreds of people to comply with the federal government's taxes. Not to pay them — to figure out how to pay them.

All of our effort, all of our hard work, has been essentially wasted. Nothing was produced. No net good was done for anybody; they were just not penalized for failure to comply with government regulations.

That's asinine.

Epilogue

My sister will graduate from college in May. As such, she won't be available as a "deduction" for my parents anymore. So between my mom's three other jobs and my dad's income, my parents will be in a higher-than-ideal tax bracket. So most of the money Mom makes on tax preparations will go to the government. Hence, she's not going to do it anymore.

So some 200 clients will have to find alternative preparers. They'll probably have to go farther out of their way, put their tax well-being in with someone they don't know and might not trust, and probably have to pay more for the service. Mom and Dad will earn less money.

An entire community will have their lives made more difficult by the government.

So the government made tax law so bizarrely complicated that it created a huge market of people who need assistance to figure out their taxes. And now it's charging taxes so high that it's driving those preparers out of business.