Uneasy Rhetoric

In the L.A. Times today there is a story about a man who, at 68, turned his life around when he started doing tax returns for low-income, and primarily immigrant, families. His story resonated with me because I’m only beginning to realize how much I learned about people by doing their taxes - beyond their financial status.

Last year, from January to mid-April of 2003, every Saturday, I would walk down to the Recreation Center with my IRS issued laptop and spend four hours preparing people’s tax returns, for free. I did it because I could. I did it because I knew that there were thousands of people paying too much money to prepare simple returns. I did it because I wanted to feel good about myself.

I went through 40 hours of training to become a volunteer tax preparer. I learned the ins and outs of federal tax law, Oregon tax law, the IRS’ lowest-bidder tax program, and was ready to make sure every low-income person that sat with me got every penny coming to them from the Earned Income Tax Credit.

A few of my customers were bad eggs. They didn’t appreciate the fact that my services were free, or they complained that they didn’t get a refund, or they insisted I do things I couldn’t do. Mostly though, people were appreciative, whether I spent 15 minutes doing a childless individual’s return or three hours doing an itemized return for a single mom who had just bought a home.

Almost every one of my customers was eye opening. My wife and I are comfortably middle class. We have a little too much debt, and we can’t afford a small house in a good neighborhood, but we’re still better off than everyone I did a tax return for. Our income was higher. We don’t have children. We were employed the whole year. I did a surprising number of returns for people whose only income for the year was unemployment - and I had to tell them that yes, it was taxable.

I did returns for people who spoke little or no English. I did returns for recent immigrants and fourth generation Americans, single people, single mothers, single fathers, students, and married couples.

We as people tend to be around our “own kind.” The people we hang out with have similar levels of education, similar incomes, similar living circumstances, or are in a position to achieve any of those things through a little more education or a job change. It’s easy sometimes to forget that other people are living under very different circumstances. It’s easy to think that everyone can afford to go to school, or put food on the table, or make ends meet if they just “worked a little harder.” But often they can’t. No one was saving for retirement. Only one person had a work-sponsored retirement plan. I could count on one hand the number of people with savings accounts. I could probably count them on one finger.

There is very little attempt among any of us, even the most sensitive, to walk a mile in anyone’s shoes but our own. I don’t have children so I don’t fully understand what it takes to raise them. I have a college degree so I don’t really understand what it is like to live without one. I can’t imagine what I’d be doing without it. Construction? Fast food? The options are limitless and unappealing. We don’t really want to look at all that bad news.

Preparing tax returns can give you insight into just how people live below the median income. No one came in with designer clothing. No one talked about going out and getting drunk the night before. There were a lot of kids trying to take courses at the community college and worried that the couldn’t make it.

I didn’t do tax returns this year, but wish I had. I was selfish, and took the time off because of a recent move, and because I wasn’t ready to redo the training (new state, new rules). I’ll go back next year. I don’t expect to find my reason for living as the man in the L.A. Times story did, but I do expect to gain some insight, at least for a little while, into the lives of people I ought to know better, but probably never will.