Accuracy
by Ann Bogle
Tax hollow this morning. I realized yesterday how fundamentally not accurate the H&R Block Free File program was for me to use. My forms did not file to IRS or Minnesota. The H&R Block Free File site instructed me to print and mail them. It may or may not be settled as filed.
On the 1040 form there is a place to record Social Security income. The amount to list is based on box 5 of the SSA-1099. The H&R Block Free File form would only accept the net amount, after premiums are deducted, not the gross as listed in box 5. In essence, the form as filled in online at H&R Block Free File differs in rule. The difference does not affect my tax liability (still zero), so I guess I am not to care, yet care I do, today more than yesterday.
As an accurist, I feel I know that accuracy is too much bother for me and many, many people less accurist, not including, I hope, any company or one employed to write tax form programs.
I knew earlier this year that the best approach would have been to make an appointment in person with Michelle in the Bloomington Social Security office so she could more fully explain allowable Social Security deductions and how to report income—related to their standard called SGA and not to IRS freelance or small business rules for taking business deductions. Yet yesterday, I went headlong through the H&R Block Free File form, deducting along IRS lines, misdeducting, as I realized today, rather than by prefiguring reportable income based along Social Security lines. I had tried to save myself three days' accounting to report a subamount of last year's $2,000 income, knowing it would fall below the minimum reporting requirement, to claim an Earned Income Tax credit, as I learned of last year, when the IRS refigured my 2010 Amended 1040 and gave me that credit.
The form I completed yesterday filled out several attachments, including one for passive business loss. I did not believe I had incurred business loss, just that I was freelancing part-time.
Today I called H&R Block's local office, to little or no help except a suggestion to call their Free File customer service line. In the morning I'll call IRS and Minnesota Revenue. I could have filed the renters' rebate at the Minnesota Revenue site, yet I went through Free File instead. The rebate form likely did get filed, but the tax forms remain to be mailed.
How many days and hours to do this tracking back? Since accuracy is of value to me. Self-blame is sufficient in solving the original problem, which was to file correctly without spending a week on it, not impossible, I see now. The Earned Income Tax Credit, if granted, would amount to $140. The forms I have not mailed would not deliver that credit.
I did mail my DNA spit test, a cool product and website I read about in The New York Times in a recent science editorial that contained facts about DNA testing. That testing product has so far gone well to use. And is not very expensive.
Layers of zero-gain pose intellectual hardship, a loss to time, and cause me to feel like a free-range not-for-profit peafowl in the disability-freelance market not factored in principles of accounting. If I am a peafowl, not-for-profit, I hope to live until old age in a little peafowl house in a good neighborhood or yard.
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Author's Note
H&R Block Free File allows me to edit my returns, since they are printed out, yet not e-filed, as I drove myself there, to the portal of that web site from the IRS web site, to learn after a day of adding a missing day.
At least you're learning the chord structure. Kafka the insurance executive was an accurist too.*
Always connect with your writing, Ann. *
My experience with the IRS--they appreciate your accuracy.*
Of anyone I know, your writing always invites--and more than repays--a second read. That is so here, with thoughts on frustration, the fine-tuned accuracy invested in such trivia as tax returns, as if the bureaucracy were designed to trash our best and most useful attributes, skills.
Thanks, John and David, who mentioned Kafka in a personal msg. before commenting here. It gives me purpose, though should not soothe me, that the story seems Kafkaesque.
Thanks, Sam and Gary.
A personal comment from EK:
"I like your story. Would you please tell me the difference between fact and fiction? Is your story fact or fiction? Is it appropriate to use the name of a company you believe has software that doesn't work? 'Peafowl'? Peacock? Why a peacock? What is the spit test?"
My reply to EK:
"I amended the story last night to acknowledge that the H&R Block Free File software allows revision if the return has not been e-filed, as mine has not. Other details are right as well about my experience of using the software. Good question about acceptable use of a company name. Fact and yet it takes on creative proportions as if narrated by a somewhat subjective narrator, how subjective is up to the writer to set as tone and the reader to perceive based on the story and other stories by that writer and by prejudice and taste.
"The spit test is by a company called 23andme noted in a genetics editorial by a geneticist in The New York Times as an affordable way to get a DNA test, that I ordered and tried."
Sometimes it's these, the mundane yet necessary motions we must make, the things we must do, that cause the hum of drama. Love the last paragraph as a summing up!
Thanks, Susan Gibb, and, as I noted elsewhere, your comments go right to the heart of it, including in ways the writer may not perceive until you note it.
Reminds me of working in accounting when I worked as a temp; reminds me of Kafka; reminds me of the ache of the hoops of accuracy before being allowed to be exuberantly in love with the world. *
I look forward to your comments on Fictionaut stories and poems. Thanks, Beate.
The word "allowed" is so gentle, to me, a soft curtsy-step when I say it, ask it of universal land-law--how I perceive it, to the disapproval of one man who heard me say it.
"allowed to be exuberantly in love with the world" -- place for today & tomorrow.
An ironic and compelling blow by blow of one modern life's most annoying and frustrating situations! Ain't it grand? I think my blood pressure went up a few notches just reading it. You should have mailed the DNA spit test to the IRS, although that may actually be soon required of us as proof of identity!*
Ha! Yikes, Michael, you may be onto something. I decided to self-test by mail. I noticed while visiting Savannah over Christmas that illicit-drug self-testing kits are available at drug stores. It was cheerily open there in that and other ways. Each and every person says "hi"--I felt like I knew everyone I passed. It was a great place to visit.
It turned out, after re-filing three times today, due to one error I made twice, I owed $53 without penalty to the I.R.S. and am due $18 from the state.
Missed this one first time around.
Love it. And congrats on your progress with all the red tape. *