If the tax reform bill were to pass in its present form, I could no longer avoid having my guest bedroom infested with guests.
Under the present tax law, I need the guest room for file cabinets. Nine of them, gray-green metallic cases whose shape and color strongly suggest penitentiaries and Washington, D.C., occupy a block of space 4 feet wide, 4 1/ 2 feet high and 2 1/2 feet deep. They contain the bookkeeper`s biography of my life that present tax law insists upon being recorded daily.
They could all be junked if the tax reform bill passed, and if they went to the dump along with the library of books on how to fill out income tax forms and the desk the present tax law requires for my wife and Mr. Deauville, the guest room would have enough space to contain a guest bed.
Yes, the tax law demands that that desk be there, first for my wife who spends a substantial part of her life in studying the many official forms governments require as a condition of accepting our tax payments, in filling out those forms and in writing letters of inquiry to computers that reject the forms she mails them on the ground that they are improperly filled out.
Periodically she must surrender the desk to Mr. Deauville, our Internal Revenue auditor, who is devoting his life to studying the contents of my file cabinets in which he firmly believes, poor deluded wretch, lies hidden the wealth of the Indies.
Without the file cabinets, the library and the desk, there would no longer be an excuse for not putting up guests. That`s what tax reform means to me: guests staying overnight once again.
Those guests might include my children, who might even bring their children. What is the world coming to when Congress threatens to let a man`s grandchildren come for an overnight visit?
That`s not the worst of it. With the new tax bill I would no longer be able to avoid overpriced restaurants. Under the present law when somebody says, ”Let`s eat tonight at Sky`s The Limit,” I merely point out that the 100 percent deduction allowed for feasting in the name of business means that Sky`s The Limit will be so packed we won`t be able to get in until everything has been eaten but the deductors` credit-card carbons.
The new bill, however, would allow only an 80 percent deduction for business feeders. The birds who have fed on the 100 percent deduction all their lives would doubtless go into shock if required to dip into personal capital for an undeductible $10 after eating a $50 meal.
I anticipate so many business-eating deductors would keel over and so many others would leave the country in disgust that the headwaiter at Sky`s The Limit would be able to give me a table on a moment`s notice.
Sure, the shrinking supply of eating deductors might drop the price of dinner from $50 to $40 per plate, but that`s no comfort to me. Paying an undeductible $40 per plate for dinner pains me almost as severely as it pains the veteran deductor to pay an undeductible $10 for his $50 meal.
The result here could be too depressing to contemplate. By depleting bankruptive restaurants of the eat-drink-and-deduct crowd, tax reform, having destroyed my excuse for avoiding such dens, would compel me to start eating with the kind of people you talk business with. But who wants to eat for business purposes?
I pick only two small examples to illustrate how tax reform can change an entire way of life, destroying old customs like putting the children and grandchildren out along with the cat when bedtime comes, and forcing people to eat overpriced food while pretending to make a deal.
We must approach this tax bill cautiously. It contains seeds of revolution.
