In the United States, April 15th is the day procrastinators everywhere dread. It’s the day their individual tax returns are due to be filed. Thankfully, the IRS and most states offer an automatic six month extension of the filing deadline, so they can put off gathering those records for another 6 months.

According to IRS data from 2008, of the 154 million returns that were filed for that year, 10 million of them were filed on extension. 

Here are some of our favorite reasons those 10 million have been unable to file their tax returns on time:

1. My bottle of Tequila fell over and the worm landed on my tax records. I had to wait for the neighborhood cat to show up and eat the worm.

2. My neighbor told me it was unconstitutional to collect income taxes. I believed him until yesterday, when I went to visit him at San Quentin.

3. My son used my tax documents in his science fair project on composting. It looks like it will take 42 years for a Form W-2 to disintegrate and only 39 years for a Form 1099 to decompose.

4. Global warming has hit my refrigerator and melted everything in my freezer. All of my food spoiled and without any food I just don’t have enough energy to walk around the house gathering up papers.

5. I don’t have any 44 cent stamps to mail in my information. I tried using 44 one-cent stamps but they don’t fit on an envelope.

6. My pet bird needed a new cage liner and my tax records were the only paper in the house.  Do you want me to take them out for you?

7. I couldn’t find a shoe box to hold my records. I had to wait for a sale at Nordstrom’s before I could afford to buy another pair of shoes.

8. I was going on a trip. I left the house for the airport and half way there I remembered that I left the stove on. So I went back to my house to turn it off. Fortunately, it wasn’t on. But, I lost so much time going back to check that I was going to be late for my flight.  So I had to drive 80 miles an hour to get to the airport on time.  By the time the officer was finished giving me that speeding ticket, I barely had enough time to get through security. That’s why I had to carry my bags. When I got to security, they wouldn’t let me take all three of my carry-on bags so I had to throw out my briefcase containing all of my tax records.