EXTON, Pa. — Walter Brandt, 71, a retired certified public accountant who irons his personal receipts before filing them, has formally requested a full audit of daylight saving time, alleging that the federal government has been withdrawing one hour from his account every spring since 1974 and repaying it through unauthorized nighttime transactions.
Brandt keeps his records in a green spiral-bound ledger in a locked filing cabinet in his basement, alongside forty years of tax returns and the warranty for a refrigerator he no longer owns.
“Every spring they take an hour,” Brandt said. “I’m told it’s being saved. Fine. Saved where? In what instrument? At what rate?”
He rejects the standard argument that the hour is returned each November. “They give it back at 2 a.m. on a Sunday,” he said. “That’s not a disbursement. That’s a transfer made at a time when no responsible person is awake to verify receipt.”
Applying a conservative 3 percent annual rate, compounded quarterly, Brandt calculates that the government owes him more than five days of accumulated time, including interest, penalties, and what he describes as “loss of use.
Since 1995, he has sent thirty-one certified letters to the U.S. Department of Transportation, which oversees time zones under the Uniform Time Act of 1966. He has also itemized $163.40 in postage as a separate claim. In return he has received one form letter and, in 2019, a brochure about railroad crossing safety.
This year Brandt drafted his own three-page filing, Form WB-1, “Request for Statement of Accrued Daylight,” and paid ten dollars to have it notarized at the UPS Store on Pottstown Pike.
Raymond Oduya, 46, a fee-only financial planner in Downingtown who refuses to discuss annuities after 6 p.m., reviewed the ledger.
“The math is clean,” Oduya said. “The issue is custody. Nobody I’ve called will confirm they’re holding the hours, and nobody will confirm they aren’t.”
Denise Albrecht, 54, a correspondence analyst in the Transportation Department who has eaten the same turkey-and-provolone sandwich at her desk since 2023, confirmed that Brandt’s file exists but declined to say whether it was current.
“We don’t maintain records of individual hours,” she explained. “We maintain records of requests concerning individual hours. There’s a distinction.”
On Oduya’s advice, Brandt has also written to the IRS asking whether the hours, if repaid, would be taxable in the year they were saved or the year they were returned.
The IRS acknowledged receipt last week and promised a written ruling during the second week of March.
It did not specify whether that meant before or after 2 a.m.
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