Internal Revenue eve is always a joyous time at our house. Grandmother always comes over early in the day to take charge of the kitchen, and soon the air is rich with the good smell of roasting checkbook and Grandmother’s delicious minced pay voucher.
Mother will have been up since dawn scrubbing and polishing J. K. Lasser’s tax guide, and the children stand around with saucers as big as eyes watching Uncle Charlie put up the tax tree.
Later in the evening everybody will pitch in and trim it with gifts for the Voice of America, the Pentagon and CIA, the Department of Agriculture, the elevator operator of the Washington Monument and all those other wonderful people who do so much for us, not only on April 15, but 365 days a year.
In the fireplace we have a blazing copy of the tax code and stockings are hung by the chimney with care in hope that H. and R. Block soon will be there.
With the fall of dusk the children put “Hail to the Chief” on the record player, and then “I’m Dreaming of a White Tax-mas.” Brimming cups are lifted to the old deductions that are no longer with us, and we all speculate warmly about which people will receive our very own share of the tax to be offered on the morrow.
“Gosh, Dad,” one of the children will say, “do you think your payment might wind up buying some of the jet fuel needed to fly Henry Kissinger to confer with President Ford on vacation?”
I allow as how I wouldn’t be a bit surprised and point out that, with all the tax I will be contributing to our country, I might be personally responsible for getting Mr. Kissinger’s plane all the way from Harper’s Ferry to Hagerstown, Maryland. Thoughts like that make you feel good about paying taxes.
Grandfather, of course, always tries to spoil the mood. “Bah, humbug!” he will say. “Your share will be used to print thirty-five pages of the Congressional Record. You might as well throw the money to the winds.”
But the magic of the night cannot be so easily ruined for the children. “Tell us the story of the first loophole,” they cry.
This is the cue for Uncle Charlie to perform, and everyone falls silent as he retells the ancient tale of three wise tax lawyers who saw a brilliant star in the east one night.
“Setting out in limousines from their homes in Georgetown,” he says, “they traveled eastward for many miles until they reached a great domed building called the Capitol of the United States.
“There the three wise tax lawyers found the Senate Finance Committee sitting in a bare committee room, and they said, ‘Lo, we have seen the strange star that burns in the eastern sky and have traveled these many miles from Georgetown to learn what miracle has been wrought.’”
The children always interrupt at that point. “Tell about the gold, frankincense and myrrh, Uncle Charlie,” they always say.
“And the three wise tax lawyers said, ‘We bear gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh.’ Whereupon the Senate Finance Committee said, ‘We don’t care about the frankincense and myrrh, but if you leave the gold with our reelection-campaign-fund managers outside the door, unto you a tax loophole shall be born.’
“Then they went outside and left the gold, and on their return they found a newborn loophole. It was wrapped in swaddling language so dense that none but a wise tax lawyer could discover it. Thus were the first men excused from the heavy burden of paying taxes.”
One of the younger children always says, “But didn’t those first men excused from paying taxes feel cheated of the right to transport Mr. Kissinger from Harper’s Ferry to Hagerstown or contribute thirty-five pages of the Congressional Record to the country?”
“Of course, they were cheated,” I always explain, “but the rest of us were enriched and made happier, for you see, it meant that the rest of us could pay more to make up for the shortfall. In that way, every Internal Revenue eve we have the joy of knowing that we can fly Mr. Kissinger a little farther or provide a few pages more of the Congressional Record than would have been possible before the first loophole. In this way, our joy on this beautiful night is increased, for we are more precious to our country.”
“Bah,” Grandfather always says at this point, “and humbug.”