What better way to celebrate the season than to get on a donkey and ride to 35 Woodfin to pay your taxes? Unlike Herod, though, Buncombe County is giving you more options than overnighting in a manger. That said, paying taxes is not yet as easy as leaving your lover. Whereas there are fifty ways to do the latter, there are only six for the former. What’s more, or less, regardless of what the Asheville Area Chamber of Commerce claims, you can’t pay your taxes any way you want. You cannot have it your way and hold the pickle, hold the CRA, for example.
For outreach and education on the ways you may pay, Buncombe County has created a video. Not to worry. It is not an elaborate production, just a bunch of blue arrows moving across dollar-bill wallpaper, words appearing different ways in PowerPoint fashion, and, of course, that great government video music. This song sounds kind of like an electronic stomach growling with a slight crescendo when it gets to the part about paying by phone. If I turn on my paranoia, the meep-meep-meep has shades of the prelude to Alan Parsons’ “Eye in the Sky.”
In the interest of full disclosure, I still need to pay my taxes. Methinks I’ll take Choice #6: Through the Nose.