Charles O. Rossotti is buoyed. In an April 15 speech to the National Press Club, the IRS commissioner bragged that a new Harris Poll showed a mere 21 percent of Americans are irate at the way this nation assesses and collects its taxes. A scant one-fifth of the republic’s 267 million souls are hopping mad.

Bet they all live in Maine.

No, not because this otherwise splendid state has the (check one): highest; one of the highest; we’re not sure where it’s ranked, but it’s too blasted high; tax burden in the county. Mainers are used to it. They’re a rugged bunch. They adapt. They make do. If they can, they move.

It’s the form, that awful packet of paperwork in black, white and revolting salmon. The only way Maine could make paying taxes more punishing would be if the governor sent gangs of club-wielding thugs out across the countryside to beat it out of the citizenry.

It would be wrong to blame the Maine Bureau of Taxation for this. That’s because they changed their name this year to Maine Revenue Services. An outfit (“your team” they call themselves) so friendly and comfy that they, in their little get-acquainted message on the inside cover, refer to the taxpayers as “folks.” Set a spell, git out yer checkbook.

The fundamental mistake most Maine taxpayers made this year was to use the form the Maine Bureau of Revenue Taxation Services mailed out at the first of the year. You know, the one that ordered you to fit a 10-digit phone number into nine revolting salmon boxes. The one that referred you to the wrong line in the federal form for a crucial calculation.

The one that, in answer to the straightforward question of how one determines if one is a full-time resident of a state rife with part-timers, advises that “a number of factors associated with residency are relevant in the evaluation of a claimant domicile” and then does not elaborate on just how in blazes a claimant domicile is evaluated. It does, however, note that to change a domicile a taxpayer must exibit actions “consistant” with a domicile change.

Suppose the taxpayer folk actually got the form filled out — without filling in the salmon boxes in such a way as to indicate an adjusted gross income in the hundreds of millions. Time to assemble to whole kit and kaboodle.

The tax form itself explicity orders folks not to attach the W-2s to the return. The last thing a folk sees when sealing the included envelope (which is not really an envelope at all but a cruel hoax of misplaced perforations with a microscopic flap) is a reminder that one should attach the W-2s. Take your pick. Either way, you’re bound to be wrong.

A few quick questions for our team. What are you going to do with the checkoff money collected for the now-defunct Green Party? Buy enough boxes for phone numbers? If the federal form can do without those little boxes altogether, why can’t yours? Can you take another try at the explanations so that lawyer folks don’t have to be consulted whenever a taxpayer folk has a question?

Maine’s tax form is such an embarassment that crackpot ideas like a flat tax or a consumption tax suddenly look a lot better. Heck, it even makes gangs of club-wielding thugs start to look pretty good.