So... I made the appointment with the tax guy. I even got there early, enough to listen to him explain to the wannabe customer ahead of me that he couldn't help her because she needed a signed document allowing her to get the taxes done for her son who was apparently incapacitated enough that he was unable to sign anything. No suggestions of whether she needed to go to a judge or who else in order to get the authorization. Just, he couldn't do it. It took him 15 minutes to get that little bit through to her. I wish her luck... and time.
I guess I should have been warned in advance by that, but I was concentrating on 1: being patiently polite, and 2: eavesdropping just because I could. There is no privacy there. I'm glad I'm not one needing to hide my financial questions from anybody. He was very young, at least from my viewpoint, but so far I had presumed that he actually knew something about taxes.
It turned out, when my turn came, that all he knew was how to plug numbers into their particular proprietary tax form on line. The one piece of assistance I did get, with apologies and for free, was the unadvertised fact that when you get a negative number, it becomes a zero and you're done. You don't, for example, save that up to subtract again from something else, or perform any other math function with it. Not even when the form directions ask you to take that and subtract or add it to something else, it's still just a zero. He also printed out the forms (aka 2 copies) for filing with the state for whatever they do to return some kind of property taxes for low income renters, like for the part of our lot fees that cover the park owner's property taxes. I figure that since we owe no federal taxes this year, we might find it worth while to fill that one out. Either way, we'll know. There were no instructions included, probably because he only knows to tell the computer what numbers to work with, and not what any of them mean relative to any others.
I bet you could train a pigeon to do that! What do you think: kernels of corn for a reward? Worms? Bugs?
Apparently my biggest problem from his viewpoint was I was asking for hard copies at the end of the process. In his world, that precluded going through their computer. I have to wonder if he's ever done any tax filing without a computer, and perhaps without knowing which number goes where and why or why not. If I were sitting across from, say, a fifty-year-old person, I bet they would have the core knowledge of what the numbers meant in addition to which slot they went on.
On the plus side, my cost was zero. For somebody who couldn't deal with paper he did manage to print out copies of the state form for renter's refund. No instructions, but at least I know those are online, and with the forms in hand I now know what form number to ask for instructions for. I do have all the tax forms like SS pay and W2s needed to deal with that. Once I knew how the IRS deals with negative numbers, I whipped through the 1040s in a breeze this morning. I'll wait for the state forms till tomorrow, since my math brain always works better in the morning.
While I was in the store finding out as little as I did, I took advantage of being there to pick up some nice large envelopes to mail out tax forms in, probably for the next 5 years. I didn't actually bother to count, so long as the pack held at least two. There were some groceries on my list as well. At least there I know exactly what I'm getting... or not... because they ALWAYS put a favorite of mine up on the top shelf of the freezer case where it's impossible to reach. No wonder we mostly call in our orders to go pick up! At least I still have one General Tso's Chicken package in the home freezer! I'm thinking supper tonight.
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