Monday edition · November 2, 2026Independent satire for an increasingly plausible world
Prickled HeraldReal News, I Think
The Daily EditionThe truth, with a raised eyebrowA paper cut above the news.

Economics

IRS Demands Americans Surrender 13 Minutes Of Fall Back Hour

Taxpayers who spent Sunday's duplicated hour sleeping have been instructed to itemize their dreams on an emergency Form 1040-ZZ.

IRS Demands Americans Surrender 13 Minutes Of Fall Back Hour
Photo: Pixabay

Following the annual end of Daylight Saving Time early Sunday morning, the Internal Revenue Service issued an urgent compliance memo reminding all Americans that the 25th hour they received overnight constitutes taxable imputed income.

According to federal revenue guidelines, any temporal gain exceeding standard 24-hour allotments must be treated as compensation from the Department of Transportation. At the median bracket of 22 percent, each citizen owes exactly 13 minutes and 12 seconds of unproductive labor directly to the federal government before the close of business.

"There is no such thing as a free sixty minutes," explained Deputy Assistant Commissioner Ross Hembree during a morning press conference. "If the federal clock grants you supplemental reality, the federal government expects a modest cut. We are already tracking several million individuals who attempted to absorb this extra hour purely for recreational resting without withholding a single minute."

For taxpayers who spent the duplicated hour asleep, the agency released an emergency Form 1040-ZZ. The new filing requires filers to itemize every nap, provide certified eye-movement logs, and declare whether any dreams yielded tangible commercial value or business connections.

"I woke up early feeling refreshed, only to realize I was legally embezzling time from Uncle Sam," said Trevor Finch, 38, a logistics coordinator from Boise, Idaho, who spent Sunday morning reviewing his alarm clock settings. "Now I have to sit at my kitchen table for 13 minutes staring at a blank wall just to satisfy the Treasury. My wife tried to claim our dog as an additional dependent hour, but the software flagged it immediately."

The agency warned that citizens attempting to rollover unspent minutes into the spring time change will face severe delinquency penalties, including mandatory volunteer shifts at the local post office.

At publishing time, the IRS announced that anyone caught hitting the snooze button three or more times would be reclassified as an independent contractor and taxed at the full self-employment rate.

Up nextRussian Diesel Meant to Cut Prices Before Midterms Arrives Nov. 7, Lasts Two Hours

More from the desks

Read the next dispatch →