Opportunity (Almost) Knocks

Finally, it looked like an opportunity presenting!

I was home a bit early after picking up Little One at the library, enjoying the hour between the day and night jobs. Sometimes I shower, sometimes I make dinner for myself and the girls, sometimes I just bop around the house wasting time, like this day, plucking my guitar as my oldest is logging on to the laptop to do homework. In the waning hours of daylight, I casually glance out the window and spot him.

The opportunity!

Across the street is a grungy hipster, clipboard in hand, knocking on my neighbor's door.

My neighbor, a plumber in the process of flipping the house, doesn’t have time to listen to the grungy hipster’s spiel. Dejected, the grungy hipster secures his clipboard and heads down to the next house.

Now I’m excited. Remember this list, these twelve questions I sent out into the aether seeking liberal answers? My quest to understand the liberal mind? Now I’ll have the opportunity.

I explain my plan to twelve-year-old Little One, who looks back at me as if I am either the weirdest thing she has ever encountered or a typical dad ready to willfully embarrass his offspring. All I want is for her to keep an eye out the window for my progressive friend while I go find the iPad, get to the Hopper blog, and pull up the twelve questions.

I imagined what would go down as he rang the doorbell and I answered. “Hi,” he’d say, and before I could get in a word edgewise, he’d say something like, “I’d like to discuss how Donald Trump is destroying the very fabric of civilization” or “Did you know that Planned Parenthood – and women’s reproductive health – is under attack?” or “Would you like to help stamp out LGBT discrimination?” or “Can I get your signature to help raise the minimum wage to $18 an hour?”

Then, I’d hold up a finger and say, “Sure. But first, I’d like to ask you a question or two.”

Actually, twelve. These ones, here.

But, alas, ’twas not to be. Hipster headed down the block towards the busy highway, yet he never crossed the street and returned back up past my house. I waited anxiously, scanning the sidewalk from the living room window, but didn’t see him. Maybe he got detained at a house down the street and I had to abandon my quest to get ready to go to work part two. Or, possibly, as Little One offered, the dude spotted me on lookout, got creeped out, and hightailed it out of the neighborhood.

Oh well. The twelve questions for a progressive remain, at this posting, unanswered…

Thirst

Consider

“Thirst is the surest proof for the existence of water.”

   - Austrian novelist Franz Werfel

Exercise

Make a selection from –

   16 ounces of Fijian water, chilled to 60 degrees

   A bottle of Hacker-Pschorr Oktoberfest Märzen

   An empty glass

and drink!

Introduction to a Mathematical Analysis of Tax Preparation

Warning: This post is not for the faint of heart. Or for 99.873% of mankind. Nor is it for anyone driving, operating heavy machinery, or in need of their mental faculties within the next hour.

Last night a young woman came in to get her taxes done. At first, it seemed simple. Just her, no dependents, two W-2s, no other income. Then it got more complicated. Seems that for the first six weeks of 2016, she lived and worked in New York, out in Long Island. Then she got a job over here in Jersey, in her chosen field, so she moved mid-February and began her new work. So though her federal is not affected and remains a 1040EZ, she now has to file a New York non-resident return as well as a New Jersey return, and both prorated for the amount of time she spent living and working in each.

It became a little embarrassing because I couldn’t find where to establish her residency dates in New York via the software we use. Plus the fact that a New York return contains two dozen forms doesn’t help. The clock was ticking and I was, in all honesty, getting a little frazzled (it was only my second New York return of the season, so I’m far from comfortable with them). I asked her if I could work on the returns over the next couple of days since she has until April 18 anyway. She said yes.

This morning I got to thinking about all this as I was shampooing and shaving in the shower. Doing a tax return is like solving a jigsaw puzzle. The more complicated the return, the more numerous the pieces and the more exotic the picture. The more returns you do, the more familiar these jigsaw puzzles become, and solving them almost becomes second nature. So I asked myself, how many patterns of returns are there? How many set types of a return? In the case above, my client had the return type of [Federal 1040EZ + NJ resident + NY nonresident + zero adjustments / credits / deductions].

At first I guessed 50, but then, recalling the class on finite math I took in 1989 which covered permutations and combinatorics, I realized it had to be much more.

Rinsing out conditioner, I mentally made a very rough list that determines the option for most major variables when doing a tax return:

Type of Federal return (1040, 1040A, 1040EZ) = 3

NJ resident vs NJ nonresident = 2

NY resident vs NY nonresident or no NY = 3

Has child / child dependent care credits Y/N = 2

Has capital gains/losses Y/N = 2

Has substantial interest income Y/N = 2

Has retirement income Y/N = 2

Has education adjustments/credits Y/N = 2

Has health care penalties/PTC adjustments Y/N = 2

Has other deductions or credits Y/N = 2

Has anything out of the blue Y/N (such as another State) = 2

Multiplying everything out, we have

3 x 2 x 3 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 =

3^2 x 2^9 =

9 x 512 = 4,608

Or 4,608 different sets/patterns of returns.

But that’s somewhat of an overestimate. In fact, if you are on a 1040EZ, you most likely do not have all the credits and deductions and alternative income listed. So if we just calculate the 1040EZ permutations with the state return(s), if any, and add that to the 1040/1040A option combined with all the permutations of the credits, deductions, etc., we get something like:

3 x 2^10 + (1 x 2 x 3) =

3 x 1024 + 6 =

3072 + 6 = 3,078

3,078 different sets of sets/patterns of returns.

Even that overstates the number of sets though, because some of those credits/deductions/etc. merely involve clicking a YES or NO button in our software, while others involving inputting a completely new form or forms. So each would have to be weighted somehow in some way, in terms of effort needed, as well as typical frequency of occurrence.

Out of fear of driving you comatose, I shall not do that. But my very inexperienced gut tells me that the result of this further weighting will yield an approximate number of

150 different sets of sets/patterns of returns.

Me, I’ve only done around 15, or 10% of the jigsaw puzzles.

Full proficiency expected sometime the beginning of February 2018.