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Want a better tax return but aren’t rich enough for tax evasion? Science has you covered! Simply declare all your lab and body-based bacteria as dependents for a tax credit. 

While people may call this tax fraud or “creative accounting,” if you have provided your bacteria with food, shelter and clothing for the last financial year, AND total bacterial income did not exceed $4200, then you technically have trillions of dependents! And when your annual income fee barely covers food and rent, it’s important to get as many tax breaks as possible. General Tips are followed by the complete Bacterial Dependent Tax Code.

Tips For Maximizing Your Tax Return

Maximize Cultures

The bigger your brood, the bigger the tax break, so be sure to culture your new wards overnight at 37 C to maximize their numbers.

Use Proper Names

A separate Form μ-810M3 must be submitted for each bacterium, so make sure you have a good naming scheme for all trillion bacteria, including strain information and a family tree. Tip: use modifiers such as “Jr” or “the MCLXXXXVIIth” for bacteria in the same family. 

Keep Track Of Birthdays

Carefully write down each bacterium’s birth date and time. This will help you assign each one a personality according to their star chart in case nosy tax people start asking.

Keep Receipts

Keep receipts from any bacteria-related purchases. Do not claim anything that might harm the bacteria, like alcohol or bleach. 

Have Photo Evidence

Take a photo with your new family! Having a record of family gatherings will help solidify the belief that your bacteria are dependants.

Count Exactly

To avoid a visit from the IRS, be sure to provide the EXACT number of dependent microbes. The IRS knows.

Grieve Conspicuously

Have lavish funerals for any bacterium that die. Love and cherish your bacteria. They are your family now. You are their god. They are children of God.

COVID-19 Addendum

If your bacteria have helped you navigate such a difficult year, have them registered as emotional support microbes

Bacterial Dependent Tax Code:

Add-Ons

If your bacteria carry any plasmids or phages, use Form C-0MP373N7 to enumerate them. 

State Microbes

Your state microbe should NOT be listed as a dependent. It is considered your civic duty to provide a safe home for that microbe. For similar reasons, you should NOT list Lactobacillus rhamnosus, which was given special protections by Ben Franklin in an 1823 executive order.

Supplements

Money spent on fiber supplements to feed your gut microbes is eligible for the Prebiotic Tax Credit established in 2015

Cytokine Changes

Previous guidelines suggested downregulating pro-inflammatory cytokines prior to tax season in order to boost microbial load. This strategy was outlawed in 2018.

Marital Microbes

If you share microbes with a spouse, be sure that only one of you claims that microbe.

Maximum Energy Limits

Any microbes earning more than 100 mol/day ATP are NOT eligible to be claimed as dependents.

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After several hours of fast pacing around and irreverent ramblings to various members of his lab, Professor Dr. Jeremy Myeres finally conceded that his earlier “eureka” moment was probably just a fleeting coffee high. 

“I thought I had solved one of the biggest mysteries of my research career, and wondered if this moment of clarity would help propel my research past all my competitors,” said a rather jittery Dr. Myeres. 

“He was going on and on about pie-in-the-sky ideas like ‘proposing award-winning projects’ and ‘securing funding to hire a few graduate students,’” said Molly DeBeers, a graduate student who overheard Dr. Meyers. DeBeers said she also witnessed Dr. Myeres pacing back and forth between the lab and his office, speaking to himself while making hand gestures excitedly. 

Dr. Meyers said the effects of the coffee wore off about an hour later. 

“After a while realized that it sounded a bit too optimistic for research,” said a defeated Dr. Meyers. “My life couldn’t possibly be solved with one sip of super strong coffee, could it?!”

Unfortunately, he had already forced one of his grad students to begin one of the eureka projects.

“I was like, holy shit, I gotta get Jake in, my most successful graduate student, he can validate my theory after just a few months. We just gotta get into the lab and get started on it ASAP,” said a now disenchanted Dr. Myeres. 

“Yeah, I knew it was bogus but I just nodded as usual,” said Jake Knaughton. 

Later that day, Jake had spent a mere 5 minutes to explain to the professor they’d already had this conversation before and how he should probably cut down on his caffeine intake. And that he was now actually on his fifth cup of the day.

After several glasses of water and 4 days of detoxing, Prof. Jeremy Myeres was seen reminiscing about the time he thought he was going to change the entire course of the field of synthetic biology earlier in the week.

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Professor Earl Foreman, who has been on away on quarantine for the past few weeks, recently asked a few grad students if they wouldn’t mind stopping by his Google Document regularly to feed his pet theory.

Professor Foreman, who calls his pet “Theo,” for short, says caring for him is easy so long as you follow some simple instructions. “Theo appreciates getting complimented for his novelty three times a day and should be fed with the fortified ego-boosters only years of subservience can buy.”

But be careful about complicating the feeding process. “Theo only eats things that are easy to digest. Nothing too complicated or esoteric; that makes his tummy hurt.”

Apart from his idea feedings, professor Foreman also asks grad students to give Theo some proper exercise, even when that proves difficult.

“Though Theo can sometimes seem very focused, he’s actually just roaming around without any guidance and getting lost. Try to keep him on the right track before he veers off into another tangent.”

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While most leaf cutter ants routinely defy the laws of physics by carrying up to fifty times their own weight, sources confirmed Friday that one lazy ant was spotted carrying a single crumb of pollen, a mere two and a half times its own weight.

“We’ve done rigorous testing on this ant colony,” said researcher Barry McClintock. “This particular ant (labeled 4N118 by researchers) was able to carry our heaviest leaf piece in the lab, but out here? She always grabs the lightest specs of food and leaves the heavy lifting to the rest of the colony.”

On top of shirking her weight responsibilities, ant 4N118 was also observed to be shuffling at a speed 2 times slower than the average ant. “This lazy ass insect is a total disappointment to its species,” said McClintock, adding that she didn’t appear to feel any shame about her colossal underperformance.

Ignoring several large tasty morsels in her way, the ant slowly toddled towards the anthill with the pollen now dragging behind her. 

“What sort of an example is she setting for the ant following her? Leafcutter ants don’t even eat pollen!” said expert ant-ologist Jeremy Noals. “Apart from being lackadaisical, she is also a complete fool!” 

Tragically, it seems unlikely that 4N118 will work out her character flaws in her 3-5 week natural lifespan, and may never reach her true potential. 

At press time, sources confirmed that the trifling unindustrious six-legged failure had paused for yet another break less than a millimeter away from its hill.

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Hello, it’s me, the 6th-year PhD student from down the hall. I’ve been observing your experiments from afar, and I have but one simple but humble request: Please, let me live vicariously through your perfect data. Just a quick hit of your graph’s flawless curves will allow me to survive another year of statistical insignificance!

I too had perfect data, many years ago. It was a stormy day, my E. coli had been on their best behavior for weeks, and my data was on a hot streak. Then, like a ray of sunshine, I saw the numbers cascade across the lab’s ancient Dell computer, their log p-value of 0.001 sparkling like a raindrop after a storm.

And there it was. Proof that my genetically engineered bacteria were producing the exact small molecule I had intended.

Alas, that euphoria was but a fleeting moment in the 2^nd year of my PhD, and I have been chasing the dragon ever since. Now I find myself deep in withdrawal, with tight standard deviations haunting my dreams night after night.

So here is my request to you, my fellow researcher: as someone at the brink of an extinct scientific career, may I steal a glance at your near perfect R² values, even for just a few forbidden moments? If you will, please just let me feast my eyes upon that flawless sigmoidal growth curve for three biological replicates you were able to create. I promise, just a taste of this Nature-calibre data will give me the strength I need to trust science again.

To reward your for this small favour, I would be happy to provide you with services that would further help you focus on generating other beautiful data points! I will clean all your glassware, pick up after you in the lab, and serve you hand-pressed coffee if you would simply allow me to freebase your raw data. For an elusive R² value of 0.99999? I will sacrifice my career, raise your first-born, and act as a human shield when you ask the feared lab technician to use her multi-million dollar machine.

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As scientists, we have all found ourselves in that awkward situation where an experiment goes horribly awry, and the only recourse is to break down in the middle of the lab.

While bawling can be a cathartic experience, the laboratory is, of course, no place for human emotions. So the next time you find yourself trying to control your endless sobs in the sterile halls of your department, make your life easier by applying these time tested techniques mentioned below in order from least to most tears (ranked volumetrically):

1. Work in zero-gravity so tears don’t leave any track marks on your face
2. Alter your PPE glasses with wipers on the inside
3. Pipette each tear back into your tear duct
4. Use pH paper to absorb the wretched smoking gun of your human nature causing this inevitable breakdown
5. Collect your tears in a biohazard bag
6. Repurpose the salts from your tears into useful buffers
7. If you have sufficient volume, dissolve agarose powder in a puddle of your tears to make a very usable agarose gel (this also works well with polyacrylamide!)

If all else fails, just say you were testing the eye wash station to make sure it was working.

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