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Cruelest? Kindest? Queries for Carrie April 2007

Query: My daughter is very excited about Takoma Park's efforts to become one of the first certified wildlife habitat communities—something they were featuring in school because of Earth Day. She says our yard would qualify for certification, but she's hazy on the details. Is this a complicated process? Is it expensive? Would it really make any difference?

— Skeptical on Seattle

Carrie: No, no and yes are the answers to your questions, but let me provide a little background for you—since your daughter's been light on the fine tune and fine print. In order for Takoma Park to become a certified wildlife habitat community, the municipality needs to have a minimum of one hundred private residences registered with the National Wildlife Federation as qualified Backyard Wildlife Habitats. The city will also certify several school grounds and parks as wildlife habitats in order to qualify for the "community" designation.

Certifying your backyard can be done online at this address: www.nwf.org/backyard/index.cfm

The NWF walks you through the qualification process over a few pages of text. Then you sign up for your certification (which includes a full yearly membership with the National Wildlife Federation), and the attractive sign to post in your yard. The total cost is about fifteen minutes of your time and twenty-five of your dollars. In return, your family will be more aware of ways they can contribute to maintaining and revitalizing our urban wildlife ecology right at home. In addition, the site provides many useful tips for reducing the watering you may do to keep your grounds healthy and increasing the percentage of friendly native plants which require fewer resources as a rule.

You can see that the application of macro-ecological techniques on a yard by yard basis may take some time to achieve a significant groundswell of support. But many of the best grassroots movements (pardon the expression) have had a similarly modest beginning. The NWF has more than 70,000 properties registered as certified wildlife habitats. Once it's the thing to do, the movement could go viral. Be a part of the solution, and you certainly will be making a difference.

Query: My partner has a venomous grudge against the systems of taxation in this country, the uses to which the monies collected are put, and the process that has evolved to extract those revenues from the populace. He has insisted for years on doing the taxes himself. I was always quite glad to let him handle the objectionable task, and thought as little about it as possible after handing him my receipts and such.

If I hadn't been tempted to try to refinance our mortgage, I don't know what. As near as I can make out, he definitely hasn't been entirely truthful about our earnings, our expenditures, our deductions or anything after our names and social security numbers. I am terrified. What should I say to him? At this point, with our finances in such a fictitious condition, I couldn't divorce him if I wanted to—and I certainly can't refinance this year.

— Innocent on Oswego

Carrie: Insist on taking over the preparation of taxes. Don't do them yourself; hire a good professional—that is, someone recommended by someone honest. Don't brook any negotiating with your partner.

The IRS have no sense of humor whatsoever about misrepresentation on the income tax forms. After a long and thoroughly nasty audit, they ordinarily fine you into a state of penurious misery. Not to sound reactionary, but they're bigger and more extensively equipped than we are in any kind of a struggle for those monies of ours that they regard as theirs.

If your partner wants to be a serious tax resister, he'll need to send a letter to the Man explaining his position. Then he'll be incarcerated for a duration following his trial. The IRS are very good at making certain that they're a hard team to beat on the legal ballfield. Refer your recalcitrant partner to this illuminating page on the IRS website: http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p2105.pdf (there are others regarding compliance and prosecution, if he's very curious).

Speak with your tax preparer about retroactively amending some of the filing your man has done in the past. If it's not possible without bringing yourself to the attention of the Behemoth, I'd advise letting sleeping dogs lie. Otherwise, give full vent to your integrity and re-file to your heart's content.

If you're not comfortable with apprising the IRS with the extent of his misreporting, have the returns prepared anyway. Make a donation in the amount he shorted the government (or a series of donations, if it's too much to handle in one go) to your favorite non-profit—and then don't declare the deduction in order that you only don't pay taxes on them the one time. In the future, those large donations could allow you to "choose" where a goodly portion of your taxes go.