Felix is scornful of Oscar's sloppy tax filing, but to his horror, he receives a letter from the Internal Revenue Service demanding his presence over a "discrepancy" in his own taxes. While he finds out his own problem is minor, he rants about his roommate's habits and Oscar's troubles have just begun.
This episode includes examples of the following tropes:
- Big Damn Heroes: When Felix lets it slip to the IRS that Oscar's tax returns are suspect, Oscar is audited. But when it looks like Oscar is going to lose everything, Felix charges into the IRS office. He has gone over Oscar's books, discovered Oscar never deducted his alimony payments, and finds that, in fact, the IRS owes Oscar money for the overpayment. He lampshades the trope by comparing himself to The Lone Ranger or the ballplayer who hits a home run on the last play.
- The Gambling Addict: While Felix is trying to make sense of Oscar's tax forms for him, he tells his roommate that he can't claim his bookie as a dependent. Oscar retorts that by the definition of a dependent (one who depends on you for more than half their income), his bookie qualifies.
- Intimidating Revenue Service: Felix is summoned to the IRS office and he thinks he's in serious trouble. It turns out that he simply forgot to sign a check, but Felix accidentally lets it slip that Oscar has been filing shady tax returns and so now Oscar is the one getting an audit.
- Meaningful Name: The tax agent with whom Felix and Oscar interact is named Lee Ferret. When used as a verb, "ferret" means to search intensely, which fits a person who has to audit taxes.
- Mistaken for Servant: Felix follows an African American woman into the back room of the IRS, thinking she's Lee Ferret's secretary. Only afterwards does he discover she is Lee Ferret. In this case, it's at least partially due to the name's ambiguity; Felix thought Lee Ferret was male, not female.
- Mistaken for Suicidal: Oscar wakes up to find Felix still in bed at the time he usually makes breakfast, an empty bottle of sleeping pills beside him. Thinking he overdosed due to stress, he calls Dr. Melnitz. Once Dr. Melnitz gets the still-sleepy Felix to explain, it turns out that the bottle only had one pill.
- Shout-Out: The episode's title refers to the ides of March, when Julius Caesar was killed.
