Someone tell me the time and place.

For the next tea party, that is.

Boston harbor, Friday Harbor, Cold Harbor, I don’t care. I’ll heave tea with the best of them.

When we’re finished with the tea, we can start tarring and feathering those responsible for what we call a tax code.

In case you’re wondering, I recently finished the annual visit to hell our betters in D.C. have imposed upon us in order to extract – and, far too often, waste – hard earned dollars from our wallets.

For that reason alone, here’s something that members of Congress, their advisers, lackeys, butt-kissers, gofers, and anyone else responsible for tax laws as they are now written should think about:

Many taxpayers believe that if a really big meteorite were about to strike this crowd, that would be unfortunate. If someone actually stopped it, that would be a catastrophe.

Imagine hiring a contractor to build your home. Imagine discovering that he was deranged, daft and demented. Imagine allowing him to go ahead. Congress and the tax code. Same thing.

While completing this year’s return, I tried an experiment. I took a question I had about the IRAs my wife and I have set up in order to afford the cost of a movie in our retirement years. I called the IRS three different times with the same question.

Result? Three different answers.

I’m not alone here. Several years ago, the folks at Money magazine conducted a similar experiment. They asked 45 different tax professionals to prepare the magazine’s annual return. Would it surprise you to learn that they got 45 different answers? In fact, when all was said and done, fewer than 1 in 4 of the preparers came within $1,000 of the correct answer – assuming, of course, there was one.

A very observant individual once noted that: (1) the Good Lord needed only two tablets to give the human race some pretty potent rules; (2) Abe Lincoln managed the Gettysburg Address in a few hundred words; (3) The Bible, the Talmud and the Koran each contain several hundred-thousand words and lay out the manner in which civilized people should conduct themselves from birth to death. The U.S. Tax Code, however, runs to several million words and is such a mess that even the people who administer it go to bed at night with headaches.

I confess. Each year I say a silent prayer as I sign my return because I have just about the same faith in its absolute accuracy as I have in a King County vote count.

I’m looking forward to the next election.

So help me, if someone runs a cross-eyed, three-legged, dried-up cow with “Flat Tax” branded on its butt, that cow gets my vote.

Oh, and while we’re on the general subject of taxes, a few words for the folks in Olympia who seem determined to tax everything from Vienna Sausages to Vaseline.

Sorry, but, what with college loans, mortgages, insurance payments, utility bills, prescriptions and whatnot, I’m just about tapped out.

Got budget problems? Do what the rest of us out here do day in and day out.

Prioritize. Stretch a buck. Go without. Reduce staff. Work late. Buy used. Get another year out of it. Cut waste. Balance the checkbook. Make sure “outgo” never exceeds “income.” Just don’t dig into my wallet, because it’s empty. I’ve checked.

Here’s a bit of help, though:

I have a friend who owns a small business. I’ve known this individual to stay late and mop the floor himself in order to cut expenses. Fifty-hour workweeks are his standard. Sixty-hour weeks are not uncommon, as are the sleepless nights that go with owning a small business.

If you’re having trouble coming up with ideas on how to manage a tight budget, where to look for savings and how to eliminate waste, you might give him – or any other small businessperson – a call. I’m sure they’d have a raft of suggestions for you.

One thing I wouldn’t do, however, is mention that you want more of their money – not unless you have a clear path to the door and your car’s engine is running.

And as for the current proposals to allow municipalities to tax citizens for the “privilege” of living in their own homes or engaging in business within said municipalities, maybe we, the citizenry, should impose a tax on lawmakers who come up with ideas that soar like dump trucks.

Mark Twain was right. “No one’s life, liberty or property is safe while the legislature is in session.”

Now, about that tea party.

Larry Simoneaux lives in Edmonds. Comments can be sent to larrysim@att.net.