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TaxBwana! Never boring!
###
Every nurse has had experience with that patient who may be ill but whose chief complaint is really Manipulative and Malignant Personality.
Yesterday, I got one of those at TaxBwana.
I’d describe her as the prototypical little old lady except I’m a little old lady myself, or rather a large old lady, so I’d be dissing my own demographic cohort.
Spindly. Bird-eyed. Prattles a lot to children about the dear little faeries who live in the hollyhocks.
A process that’s supposed to take one hour max had already dragged on to two and a half hours by the time I got to her. The way it works is that one person prepares the return, and then another person does all the calculations again as a quality assurance.
I was the little old lady’s QAer.
She had me explain and re-explain stuff that I knew perfectly well her tax preparer had already explained to her.
She did it because she could.
Then she told me that she’d changed her mind about one of the consent forms she’d signed.
“See that man over there?” she said, pointing to Ahmad, one of the first-year tax-preparers. “He’s from Iran! I don’t want him to have access to my tax returns!”
Ahmad is certainly from some place outside the U.S. If I’d thought about it all, I would have assumed India or Pakistan. But, sure. It could have been Iran.
I smiled frostily at her.
First Rule of TaxBwana: Don’t talk about politics.
The little old lady’s eyes had turned spiteful and slightly triumphant—she could see what an effort it was for me not to bash her over the head with the nearest heavy object at hand. She was chattering on and on about how the the Iranians were spying on her over the Internet.
Ahmad was sitting at the table right across from us.
She raised her voice. “I don’t want that man to see my tax returns! He’s from Iran!”
Shocked, I looked over at Ahmad. Fortunately, he is one of those people who’s more-or-less oblivious to stuff going on around him; he was deep in the process of boring the clients sitting in front of him about some particularly pedagogic and arcane aspect of tax law. The clients looked desperate, but Ahmad looked unscathed.
“We’re not going to talk about this,” I said. “If you want to rescind your permission, it is certainly your right to do so.”
“In fact, I don’t want you to do that—whadiya call it? Putting my tax return on the Internet?”
“That’s fine,” I said. “I’ll summon your tax preparer. She can help you redo your return.”
“Why can’t you do it?”
Because I don’t want to, bee-ach, I thought. And you can’t make me. I'm a volunteer!
But I just gave her another frosty smile, got up from the table and walked away.
###
Spent half an hour with another client trying to figure out whether it would be more advantageous for her to file married-filing-jointly or married-filing-single (the worst possible tax status!)
Her husband was serving 14 years on at the Eastern NY Correctional Facility outside Ellenville for crack cocaine distribution.
The feds had seized a substantial amount of his property to pay off his fines.
So the big question was: Was she on the hook for her spouse’s fines?
Not surprisingly, there is little or no information available on this particular scenario, so in the end, I opted for the tax status that would shelter her best if liability did accrue (and I saw no reason why it wouldn’t.)
###
Got home; forced myself to go running. Listened to Dennis Lehane’s latest novel Since We Fell, which I’m afraid is subpar.
Despite all the exercise, woke up in the middle of the night and could not go back to sleep for anything!
My life is fine, but at any one point, there are always problems. First-world problems! Like my printer has suddenly stopped printing in color despite the fact that it has plenty of colored ink, and I’m not sure whether that’s due to clogged nozzles, or some weird setting I changed in the software, or a corrupt driver. And who the hell wants to spend two hours watching YouTube videos on how to clean your printer nozzles? Not me!
But you wouldn’t think these types of problems would keep me up at night.
Anyway, I ended up watching lots and lots of old Law and Order: SVU episodes.
And thinking: If only I could spend all my time watching Law and Order: SVU episodes—only I couldn’t ‘cause you know: existing episodes run out after 400 hours—what a happy and fulfilling life I’d be living.
###
Every nurse has had experience with that patient who may be ill but whose chief complaint is really Manipulative and Malignant Personality.
Yesterday, I got one of those at TaxBwana.
I’d describe her as the prototypical little old lady except I’m a little old lady myself, or rather a large old lady, so I’d be dissing my own demographic cohort.
Spindly. Bird-eyed. Prattles a lot to children about the dear little faeries who live in the hollyhocks.
A process that’s supposed to take one hour max had already dragged on to two and a half hours by the time I got to her. The way it works is that one person prepares the return, and then another person does all the calculations again as a quality assurance.
I was the little old lady’s QAer.
She had me explain and re-explain stuff that I knew perfectly well her tax preparer had already explained to her.
She did it because she could.
Then she told me that she’d changed her mind about one of the consent forms she’d signed.
“See that man over there?” she said, pointing to Ahmad, one of the first-year tax-preparers. “He’s from Iran! I don’t want him to have access to my tax returns!”
Ahmad is certainly from some place outside the U.S. If I’d thought about it all, I would have assumed India or Pakistan. But, sure. It could have been Iran.
I smiled frostily at her.
First Rule of TaxBwana: Don’t talk about politics.
The little old lady’s eyes had turned spiteful and slightly triumphant—she could see what an effort it was for me not to bash her over the head with the nearest heavy object at hand. She was chattering on and on about how the the Iranians were spying on her over the Internet.
Ahmad was sitting at the table right across from us.
She raised her voice. “I don’t want that man to see my tax returns! He’s from Iran!”
Shocked, I looked over at Ahmad. Fortunately, he is one of those people who’s more-or-less oblivious to stuff going on around him; he was deep in the process of boring the clients sitting in front of him about some particularly pedagogic and arcane aspect of tax law. The clients looked desperate, but Ahmad looked unscathed.
“We’re not going to talk about this,” I said. “If you want to rescind your permission, it is certainly your right to do so.”
“In fact, I don’t want you to do that—whadiya call it? Putting my tax return on the Internet?”
“That’s fine,” I said. “I’ll summon your tax preparer. She can help you redo your return.”
“Why can’t you do it?”
Because I don’t want to, bee-ach, I thought. And you can’t make me. I'm a volunteer!
But I just gave her another frosty smile, got up from the table and walked away.
###
Spent half an hour with another client trying to figure out whether it would be more advantageous for her to file married-filing-jointly or married-filing-single (the worst possible tax status!)
Her husband was serving 14 years on at the Eastern NY Correctional Facility outside Ellenville for crack cocaine distribution.
The feds had seized a substantial amount of his property to pay off his fines.
So the big question was: Was she on the hook for her spouse’s fines?
Not surprisingly, there is little or no information available on this particular scenario, so in the end, I opted for the tax status that would shelter her best if liability did accrue (and I saw no reason why it wouldn’t.)
###
Got home; forced myself to go running. Listened to Dennis Lehane’s latest novel Since We Fell, which I’m afraid is subpar.
Despite all the exercise, woke up in the middle of the night and could not go back to sleep for anything!
My life is fine, but at any one point, there are always problems. First-world problems! Like my printer has suddenly stopped printing in color despite the fact that it has plenty of colored ink, and I’m not sure whether that’s due to clogged nozzles, or some weird setting I changed in the software, or a corrupt driver. And who the hell wants to spend two hours watching YouTube videos on how to clean your printer nozzles? Not me!
But you wouldn’t think these types of problems would keep me up at night.
Anyway, I ended up watching lots and lots of old Law and Order: SVU episodes.
And thinking: If only I could spend all my time watching Law and Order: SVU episodes—only I couldn’t ‘cause you know: existing episodes run out after 400 hours—what a happy and fulfilling life I’d be living.
