If my life is judged by my tax return, I live a simple existence. I don't own a house anymore. I don't have a small business, tuition credit, massive medical bills, nor do I qualify for a farm credit, damn the luck. My risk of an audit by the IRS is so low, according to my tax software, that I have set a new standard for which there is not a green enough colour on the little "Green-or-Red" risk icon. In short, I am extremely unremarkable to the IRS. Since I aspire to fly lower than the radar, that is a good thing. Perhaps as a more and more random and innocuous little cog I will soon drop off of the gear altogether.
If you haven't figured out by now, today was tax day around the Crash household. Its a short event without much hand wringing and the "Jetson's" factor has made it even more painless.
When I was growing up one of the popular television cartoons, at least at our house, was the Jetson's. This happy little cartoon sitcom featured the nuclear family of the future. George Jetson toiled away happily at Spacely Space Sprockets bringing home the bacon for daughter Judy, Jane, his wife, his boy Elroy and also to pay for all of the gizmos that the future had to offer. Robot maids, mechanical pet dogs, treadmills that run amok and video calling were all far flung fantasies of the future.
Now, as I fling my tax return into the ether and within hours am told, electronically of course, that the IRS will drop my little return right into my little checking account, electronically of course, I am beset with the Jetson Factor. Hell, the only thing that hasn't come to fruition from that cartoon is flying space cars that fold up into a brief case. Everything else is there and more. Mechanical Dogs: check. Video Calling: check. Robot Maids: Honda is on it if you have the dough.
Now, when it comes time for Caesar to call due his note, my computer and software remember all of my data from last year, ask me a few questions, request the smallest amount of information and in a very short time render up that which is Caesar's. For all of this there is not a scrap of paper to attend to. Although some people still send me actual paper copies of things, the amazing tax gnomes go straight to the bank, electronically of course, and get their own copies, electronically of course, thank you very much. Paper? What an anachronism.
In looking at the present, and the future, from a seat firmly rooted in the past, I don't consider myself a Luddite. I love my I-touch, I Skype my peeps and I access my desktop remotely from my laptop. All the same, as I embrace these things, I still look at them a bit askance I am formed and influenced by the perspective of my youth. That which was fantastical then has become mundane today.
Then there are the things that do not change. Caesar still requires the rendering of that which is his. The collection and disbursement methods are considerably more sophisticated but the collection must still be made so that the welfare of the citizens can be looked to, the roads maintained and the Pax Romana extended. Or so it should be.
While the collection due is indeed made, I suppose the welfare of the citizens, the state of the roads and most certainly the peace are as elusive as the flying space cars that fold to a handy briefcase sized carrying case. On those I am still waiting.
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