{"id":6964,"date":"2012-01-25T08:30:14","date_gmt":"2012-01-25T13:30:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/?p=6964"},"modified":"2017-01-08T13:51:04","modified_gmt":"2017-01-08T18:51:04","slug":"form-filling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/2012\/01\/25\/form-filling\/","title":{"rendered":"GOLF OR TAXES"},"content":{"rendered":"

 <\/p>\n

Every January<\/strong><\/span> I spend a day filling out employer tax forms.<\/p>\n

My favorite is the Federal Unemployment Tax Act (FUTA) form.<\/p>\n

I did my first FUTA Form 940 in 1978, when my dad went to Florida for the winter.\u00a0 He and his high school buddies golfed in Boca Raton, and I filled out FUTAs in Cleveland.<\/p>\n

Not bad.\u00a0 I like tax forms better than golf.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Toby Stratton (far L) w\/ friends at Boca Lago CC, 1983<\/p><\/div>\n

The treasurer<\/strong><\/span> of Ohio likes his W-2 reconciliations promptly.\u00a0 The Ohio Bureau of Employment Services also likes its money quickly.\u00a0 The\u00a0 Ohio Workers\u00a0 Compensation bureau has rachmones<\/em> (pity) and bugs me only twice a year, not quarterly like everybody else.<\/p>\n

\"\"I used an IBM Selectric-style typewriter for tax forms until the machine died last year.\u00a0 The A<\/em> key wouldn\u2019t work.\u00a0 That was its main drawback.
\n\u201c lbert
\nStr tton”\u00a0 didn\u2019t cut it with the government.\u00a0 I threw out the typewriter and several boxes of Ko-Rec-Type.<\/p>\n

Now I use IRS computer forms, except for my Yiddishe Cup 1099s, which I do by hand.<\/p>\n

Last year<\/strong><\/span> I used blue ink on Yiddishe Cup’s 1099s.<\/p>\n

The gobierno<\/em> prefers black ink, I’ve learned.\u00a0 I\u2019ll get with the program this year.<\/p>\n

What are you in jail for?<\/p>\n

Blue ink.<\/p>\n

No thanks.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

I wore<\/strong><\/span> a camping headlamp and crawled around the attic, culling old manila folders, making room for new files.<\/p>\n

The old files weren\u2019t read by anybody.<\/p>\n

Why did I save all this stuff?<\/p>\n

Because the government wanted me to.<\/p>\n

\"\"I got<\/strong><\/span> insulation flecks on my fleece jacket.\u00a0 It was freezing up there.\u00a0 And there were mouse droppings and desiccated rubber bands.<\/p>\n

My dad used to recycle manila folders.\u00a0 For instance, he would reuse the file “1975 Plumbing\u201d in 1981.<\/p>\n

I threw out 30 pounds of paid invoices, checks and rent rolls.\u00a0 I do this every January.<\/p>\n

Should I<\/strong><\/span> feel nostalgic?<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t.<\/p>\n

—-
\nHere’s an op-ed, <\/span>“From Soltzberg to Stratton,<\/span><\/a><\/span>” from last week’s Jerusalem Post<\/em> (Jan. 17).
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"

Theodore “Toby” Stratton (ne Soltzberg), 1938, age 21<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  Every January I spend a day filling out employer tax forms. My favorite is the Federal Unemployment Tax Act (FUTA) form. I did my first FUTA Form 940 in 1978, when my dad went to Florida for the winter.\u00a0 He and his high school buddies golfed in Boca Raton, and I filled out FUTAs […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,3,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6964","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-family-history-not-boring","category-miscellaneous","category-toby-stratton"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6964","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6964"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6964\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24718,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6964\/revisions\/24718"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6964"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6964"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6964"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}