Passports and Taxes

In early 1975 someone stole our passports, not just mine but Joanne’s and the kids’ as well. Joanne’s and mine would have fetched more from the fence because adult terrorists are more common than child terrorists. (At least, that's the way it was back then.)

Mine was more valuable than Joanne’s because there are more brunette, male terrorists than blond, female terrorists with freckles. But all of our passports had histories, visa stamps, exit and entry stamps, from a variety of countries, really fine platforms for artful forgers.

It was all my fault, really. I was very taken with the straw bolsos that I saw men and women carrying around town. Large bags they were, with straps so you could carry your purchases over your shoulder rather than dangling them in a hand held bag.

Bolsos also made life easier for thieves. They could just dip in and take what they wanted without fiddling around with confederates or pocket slitting. And dainty dipping had so much more finesse about it than the standard snatch and run street crime.

On this particular day I was going to the American chargé d’affaires to do something with the passports. I think they were up for renewal. In any event, I had them all with me in my trusty bolso, and they were all stolen.

I continued on to the chargé d’affaires office, but with a slightly modified mission. I wanted to report stolen passports and request their replacement. As I entered the phone rang. A pretty young lady at the receptionist’s desk did not pick up the receiver. Instead, she called into the chargé d’affaires’ office, “Señor, el teléfono.” Except when she said it, it came out, “sehn.YOR, ehl tehl.uh.FO.no.” I thought, “Dear God, I’ve lost our passports and now I’m dealing with someone’s niece who’s spending her summer vacation in Spain. Someone’s niece who flunked Spanish.”

In spite of this dubious beginning, my report was accepted and they furnished me with forms needed for replacement. Joanne took passport photos, which she then developed and printed in the family dark room. We returned the forms and sat back to wait.

Within a few weeks our children had their new passports, but ours did not arrive. So we waited and we waited some more.

After a while it became apparent that we weren’t going to get new passports, and so I wrote a letter to the chargé d’affaires stating that we didn’t mind being persona non grata, but being permanent persona non exceeded even bureaucratic bounds. What was the problem?

It turns out the feds had a question about our income taxes. They wondered why we hadn’t paid any since 1970, five years before. We hadn’t even filed. But God forefend they should actually ask. Instead, they just moved our applications from the bottom of one pile to the bottom of another.

The answer was simple enough. On Guam we became voting citizens. We filed our 1040s with GovGuam and paid our taxes accordingly. In Spain we didn’t have to pay taxes on the first $50,000 of our annual income, and we were profoundly below that level.

I realize now that even if you don’t own Uncle Sugar any money, you need to file. It simplifies matters so much. How’s Big Brother going to keep his spotting scope on you if you don’t show your bushy tail once in a while?

Eventually our new passports arrived and I only had one problem. In my passport photo I looked like Carlos, the terrorist who was running wild all over Europe at the time. Ah, well, no solution is perfect.