In any case, this year's tax-filing experience having borne such a remarkable resemblance to last year's tax-filing experience - except worse because now we had to figure out how to pay taxes on income from the books I'd sold - lump the book income in with the piano teaching income? Crack open a second business Schedule C? - anyway, my brain being in no mood, I decided to just re-publish last year's post on the subject:
A Taxing Endeavor (Posted 4/5/2017)
The Lieutenant Colonel is a wiz at many things, the filing of income taxes being among them.
He devours tax forms, schedules and work sheets by the bushel and spits out the seeds, |
The Lieutenant Colonel's wife, not so much.
But Taxese is one language I swear I'll never conquer. |
Every year around this time Tom and I sit down together at the dining room table for the purpose of doing the taxes. |
To this end I always take voluminous notes,
"But those are the same notes you took last year and the year before that and the year before that," said Tom, glancing at my notebook as I scribbled away, "why do go to the trouble of writing down the same things year after year?"
"Repetition is the key to learning," I replied,
...though that kind of thinking might just be more of a piano-teacher thing. |
"Now, how do you fill in this line?" he asks me.
"You fill it in with 'ABC,' " I reply, jubilant that I've finally cracked the code of a single line item.
"What?" I cry in dismay, "how do you figure that?"
"Well, see," he says pointing to the instruction booklet, "it's right here on page 37, number 11, letter C, subject 6-e." As if it were as clear as the nose on my face. |
I mean, I'm quite sure our yearly income for the past decade wouldn't cover a down-payment for the cost of Melania's 25-carat rock,
But then at least I know where a portion of our hard-earned money goes.
Even if I could never in a million years figure out how to get it there. |