XXV
POTASH AND PERLMUTTER DISCUSS THIS HERE INCOME TAX
"Didn't I beg you that you shouldn't give to a lawyer that claim against Immerglick which we had for the money we loaned him five years ago?" Abe Potash said to his partner, Morris Perlmutter, as he pored over form 1040, revised January, 1918, which bore in large black letters the heading, "Individual Income-tax Return for Calendar Year 1917."
"Ten hundred and fifty dollars he paid us, and now I don't know should I stick it under A, B, C, D, E, or F."
"I suppose you would rather see Immerglick get away with the whole sum as pay eight per cent. of it to the government," Morris commented.
"I would give the government not only eight per cent., but eighteen per cent., Mawruss, if they would only send round their representative and fill out this here paper themselves, and leave me in peace," Abe said. "I 'ain't done nothing for a month now but write down figures on this rotten blank and scratch them out again, and what is going to be the end of it I don't know."
"All the government asks of you, Abe, is to be honest," Morris said.
"Sure, I know," Abe replied. "But to be honest about fixing up this here income-tax return, Mawruss, you've got to be a lawyer, a certified public accountant, a mind-reader, and one of these here handwriting experts who knows how to write the whole of the Constitution of the United States on the back of a two-cent stamp, which take, for instance, 'N. Contributions to Charitable Organizations, &c. (Enter below name and address of each organization and amount paid to each),' and while I 'ain't given away a million dollars to charity in nineteen seventeen exactly, I can see where next year when somebody comes round to schnoor from me five dollars for the Bella Hirshkind Home for Aged and Indignant Females in the Borough of the Bronx, City of New York, y'understand, he's going to get turned down on the grounds that Mr. McAdoo only provided three lines for all charitable contributions and I'm saving them up for the Red Cross, the S.P.C.A., and one orphan asylum with an awful short name."
"Did it occur to you that you could give the Bella Hirshkind Home four dollars and sixty cents and leave it out of your income-tax return altogether?" Morris suggested.
"Listen!" Abe said. "I ain't trying to invent ways of getting around what looks like the only good feature of this here income-tax return, Mawruss. If Mr. McAdoo or President Wilson or whoever it was that fixed up this here paper thought that the average man didn't need more as three lines to put down his charities in, Mawruss, who am I that I should set my opinion up against theirs? Am I right or wrong?"