Addendum, here and now: I’d forgotten this entry. Sure chuckled at it today, like I chuckled when I wrote it in 1996, but back then nobody else was in on the joke. Kept it oblique above, only asking, “But, what can you do?” without answering the question.

There’s no harm in answering it now: From 1987 until 2013, I didn’t file tax returns, based on the intricate moral argument of Fuck Off.

The IRS never gave a damn, pestered me exactly once in those 26 years, and now the Statute of Limitations has resolved all legal peril. There were no penalties, and there are only two things I regret about those years of not filing 1040s:

When I made the decision not to file, I was a single man in my 20s, and the idea that I’d ever find someone and fall in love, that my decision to scoff at the law might impact anyone but me, never entered my mind at all.

And then my beloved Stephanie came along, and amazed me by falling in love and happy-ever-aftering with me. Who’d a thunk it?

By far, my biggest regret about being a non-filer is that it brought her the hassle of an illegal husband. It restricted where I could work, which made us poorer than we might’ve been, and she worried that the IRS was gonna get me — or maybe get both of us, since she knew everything. That’s my main regret, not just in taxes, but in life.

My other regret, in a very distant second place, is that I resumed filing taxes, but again, what can you do?