The beginning of February marks that time when all government-required tax forms should have been received.

Our toil diminished to numbers.

Now the race is on until mid-April when those numbers must be filed.

In the interim, we’ll go shopping for a blood-sucking barracuda-type CPA who can make sense of the tax codes.  We’ll collect paperwork, receipts, mileage logs.  We’ll assess numbers, wring our hands, and wonder, “Where did all the money go?” and “How much am I going to owe?” and “If we are the government, who decided that we should have to pay almost a whopping third of my income in taxes?”

We’ll tighten our spending for a while.  We’ll head off to the grocery store, thinking hot dogs instead of steak.

And as we pay for that counterfeit meat, we’ll eye some colorful non-federal-taxpayers in line paying for steaks with food stamps.  We’ll frown and eye them closely, noting their expensive tattoos and designer handbags, and the mountainous cartons of cigarettes they slap onto the conveyor belt.

We’ll wonder, what’s wrong with this picture?

Then we’ll watch them climb into their new gas-guzzling Suburban as we toss our hotdogs into our nine-year-old Honda.

Given that I work for myself and, therefore, it takes more time to figure out my income taxes than it does to make it, this means that while I’m busy pouring over numbers, those individuals who don’t pay taxes, are spending that same time doing whatever they want.

They also don’t have to pay the whopping $600 that I pay to a credible accountant each year to ensure that my taxes are done accurately.

It’s just not fair.  That’s when it hits me that it’s getting more and more difficult to support my government in the manner to which it has become accustomed.

Note to Washington D.C.: Don’t make me come down there!

I’ve decided that since we taxpayers are the ones doing all the work, we should have more of the fun.

We should begin by changing tax season.

It should be more like hunting season.  Wouldn’t it be fun to shoot some taxes and remove them from existence?

When we receive a W-2 or 1099 (proof that we worked), it would become our hunting license.  Then we’d be free to spot a ten-point unreasonable tax, sneak up on it and blast the ever-living bejeezus out of it.

We could gut it and proudly display it on our walls above a sign saying, “Bagged another one.”

We could brag to our friends that America is a freer, happier place, thanks to us.

Or, what if tax season was more like football season?  We could all meet in the parking lot of our favorite post office and, just before dropping our tax filings into the mailbox, we could hold an impressive tailgate party.

Planting season? We could drop our tax forms into the ground and whatever grows we give to the government!

Vacation season?  Along with our tax forms, we could send into the IRS a list of all the great places we would have gone had we not had to pay taxes.

What about you? Any idea as to how we could make tax season a little more enjoyable?