Being Married Means Never Having to Do Paperwork
…Unless you’re my husband, in which case it means doing all the paperwork.
When R. and I first moved in together, he didn’t know that I’d actually been on the run for several years. You know how you keep secrets from your partner? Well, I’d been changing addresses and crossing state lines at a feverish pace, hoping to outpace a whore named RITA. Despite my best efforts, RITA caught up with me at R.’s townhouse a few weeks before the annual filing deadline.
Also known as the Regional Income Tax Authority, RITA is the bullshit little racket that forces Ohio municipality residents 18 years or older to file an annual return. Conveniently, RITA operates outside the state and federal tax structures, which means she saunters into your life and wreaks havoc long after you’ve already dealt with the tax-devils you know.
Before I lived in Portland, I lived in Cincinnati (I don’t recommend it), Willowick, Willoughby and Mentor, OH, and before that, New York City (Queens!) and Syracuse, NY. After my stint in Cincinnati, I received a letter from RITA about my tax obligations…kind of. The wording was weird. It didn’t tell me that I owed RITA money, per se. It sorta…asked me? If I had to summarize the contents of the letter it would be this:
Hey there, KP. It’s your buddy, RITA. You don’t know me, but I’m actually a tax bureau. No, not the IRS. Nope, not the Ohio Department of Taxation either. I’m the one that covers municipalities. Not all of them, mind you. Just some of them. One we think you may have lived in when you filed one of your tax returns. Fun, right! And if that’s the case, that you did in fact live in a place where me, your pal RITA, hung out at the time of your residency, then you owe us money. But maybe not! Girl, where even were you in 2012?! Lolz. I’m not totally sure, though, so can you, like, get back to me and let me know. Because I want that cash that you might potentially owe me. K thanks!
Naturally, I read that letter and proceeded to…throw it right in the trash. I mean, if RITA couldn’t even tell me what I owed them, why should I be obligated to help them out? I also wasn’t totally sure where in Ohio I was at the time of the aforementioned tax return. There was a very good chance I lived in multiple places.
Another complication was the fact that RITA’s influence had increased exponentially in the intervening years. Today, RITA runs rampant throughout the whole damn state. At the time in question, however, out of all the places I resided, RITA only had her claws in Cincinnati.
And beyond that, I’d estimate that my take-home income was less than $25k. How much could I have possibly owed RITA? One year, I owed the entire state of Ohio a dollar and change (my mom wouldn’t let me send it in coins out of spite). What was RITA hounding me for? 83 cents? Considering that there are billionaires out in the wild not paying taxes at all, there had to be bigger fish to fry.
How do I know that to be true? Because eventually, RITA fucking gave up. I fought the municipal tax law, and I won. Or, more specifically, I ignored the tax law, and the tax authority stopped trying to find me. Moving to Thailand probably helped, although I hadn’t heard from RITA for at least a year or two prior. She did follow me to two different addresses in Portland before calling my dad (a total stalker move) and putting me on a collection agency phone list, but I eventually wiggled my way out of that one, too. The point is that RITA is no longer a part of my life.
Now, if you’ve been with this newsletter for a while, you probably know that this story actually has a point beyond being mildly entertaining. And you’d be right. The reason why my battle of wills with RITA dragged on for YEARS is mostly due to the fact that I didn’t want to dig out my tax returns, figure out which of my many addresses I used to file, do the math on how much I owe or (heaven forbid) REFILE my goddamn taxes to avoid the municipality obligation.
All of that was going to require me to read a lot of documents that make my eyes glaze over and my brain do that white noise sound until I don’t have to deal with them anymore. I barely got through the initial letter, which looked frighteningly official enough to scare me into opening it in the first place. Otherwise I probably wouldn’t have because adulting has way too much paperwork as it is.
Every time you get a job, paperwork. Every time you buy a house or vehicle of any kind, paperwork. Every tax season, paperwork. Every mortgage, HAO, insurance payment, paperwork. Every medical visit, paperwork. If someone had explained the number of terms and conditions and signatures and initial on the dotted line experiences I’d need to endure to be an adult, I’d probably have spent less time trying to grow up so damn fast.
Thankfully, I found a way to mitigate this mountain of documents. I got married. And I was smart enough to get hitched to someone who had been living as an adult for far longer than me. Someone who could get through the legalese in the eight billion documents we received when we bought our home in Austin and tell me what was actually important. His body doesn’t physically shut down at the mere mention of having to fill out forms.
Do I feel a bit guilt about foisting all this on my man? Maybe a little. If you listened to the audio companion about trad wives, you know that my dad was a big proponent of my sister and I never relying on a man. I get it. He wanted us to be self-sufficient. But if we never relied on our husbands for anything then…who the fuck is going to do all this paperwork?! As evidenced by the RITA debacle, it ain’t gonna be me. And if most of my girlfriends are any indication, it isn’t going to be any of them either.
Is that a sign that the patriarchy has won? I doubt it. I personally like to think that feminism means never having to do paperwork, but I could be wrong about that. Maybe that’s just my thing. In all seriousness, though, I’m confident that my girlfriends and I could pick up the slack and manage all the documentation that comes with adulting if we really had to. It’s certainly better to know and not need than never to know.
In the meantime, I’m going to ride the wave of being a paperwork trophy wife as long as possible. I’m pretty sure R. is on board with that. If the RITA incident had any sort of overarching silver lining it would be that it gave my husband valuable insights into my personality. He learned that I’m wily, a bit of a risk taker and willing to move out of the country to avoid giving the tax lady a single cent more than I (think I) rightfully owe. Most importantly, he knows to never, NEVER trust me with the paperwork.
With pleasure,
Yes, Misstrix
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