Gold fish farming and the government

Well, my brother-in-law decided the swimming pool out behind our house which was only 8 feet deep in the deep end wasn't deep enough. He broke out the cement bottom and began digging. Now in this area, the water level was less than 8 feet, so the swimming pool started immediately filling up with muddy water.

And the mud, being mostly clay and soaking wet, was extremely sticky and heavy. It did not take Dale long to wrench his back out of place--and that was the sudden end of the project. The swimming pool now had cement walls, and a mud bottom. So it was a rectangular pond. The water filled it up considerably. Naturally, mosquitoes found the pond a haven and began laying eggs by the thousands. I could see the wrigglers wiggling around and knew that if allowed to mature, we would be overwhelmed by mosquitoes.

So I went to our local pet store and bought 100 gold fish for 10 cents each. They were "feeders" that supposedly bigger fish were supposed to eat. I turned them all loose in the pond. A few died due to the sudden changes in temperature or whatever, but about 94 of them lived. And began to grow.

I went back to the pet store and bought some anacharis, a plant that grows in fish tanks. It flourished in the pond. And the fish kept getting bigger. Oh yes, they did eat the mosquito larva, and duckweed and nibbled on the anacharis. But they were hungry, so I went to the feed store and found they actually had something called Purina Trout Chow. The goldfish did not care that it was designed for trout. They ate it with pleasure.

In six months, the original gold fish had grown to 6 inches in length. Then an unexpected thing happened. They laid eggs and thousands of gold fish hatched out. Some of the little fish were of course eaten by the bigger fish, but since there was so many weeds growing in the shallow end of the pond, the little fish mostly survived.

I began to net out the larger fish and took them to pet stores. I sold them for $5 apiece, and the pet stores marked them up to as much as $15 apiece. Now I suddenly had a gold fish farm.

That year while filling out my tax papers, I noticed a place to mark down FARMING activities, so I unwittingly checked the box. Next thing I know, the United States Government is sending me papers every two or three months for reports on my fish farm. How many acres was it? How many "head" did I have on my farm? What was the estimated value of my "herd"? Did I own the land, or was I leasing it? Did I expect to take out a farmer's loan? And of course the most important thing as far as the IRS was concerned--how much profit did I expect to gain from my farming activities?

I don't know who read all the reports that I sent back, but all this paper work was sort of taking all the fun out of raising gold fish. So, we pumped out most of the water out of the pond, caught all the fish in nets, and sold them all to fish stores. I made enough profit to pay for the bags of Purina Trout Chow, and not much more. I informed the government I had stopped leasing the pond and was now officially out of the gold fish farming business. Some of the little fish escaped and they kept the mosquitoes from multiplying. But... I was officially no longer a "farmer."

It is almost tax time again. Hopefully you won't have to fill out myriad forms because you are a farmer!

David A. Youngs