Opportunity Lost

Today, due to the fact that she is off track, Emma went with me to Tax Class. The promise of fast food for a mid-morning snack AND for lunch was too good to pass up. Yea. She won't be making THAT mistake again.....

Which is too bad. Because it didn't occur to me until too late, to put HER on the computers.

Today we took them SCREEN by SCREEN.

OMFSM..... if this one woman, who I will call "Jen", because that is her name, doesn't get behind EVEN WITH screen by screen instructions.

Enter zip code is the screen. The instruction given is: "enter in a zip code, doesn't matter for this". "What do I put here?" she asks. So I tell her "95624". "9.....5....6....2....4....?....?....?....?"

Yes. Dear FSM... YES.

"Is he blind?" He's a mechanic....what do you think?

"This W-2 doesn't have any allocated tips." Do you tip your mechanic? "No." Then that's probably why he doesn't have any allocated tips. (time passes) You need to press "enter" to go to the next question.

What you can't tell from this exchange, is that I had to tell her EVERY SINGLE TIME to "press enter" after EACH AND EVERY QUESTION.

Oh. And she had to hunt down that "Enter" key to boot.

It scares me to think she is a nurse.

Taxes ARE complicated.

Entering information into a database is not. And that's really what this is. ESPECIALLY at this stage of class.

Personal info: Name, SSN, Address
Income statements: W-2's, 1099-INT etc. It's just transfering the info from one place to the other. Fill in the blank.

And still...... DO NOT ENTER YOUR OWN SSN WHEN DOING SOMEONE'S TAX RETURN! They have one. Use that one.

I swear.... I could get Emma up to speed on doing basic returns in a week.

Schedule C? (self employment)

Schedule D? (capital gains and losses)

Schedule E? (If'n you have rental property)

I shudder to think.......

I think that even a Schedule A is gonna do some of them in.

If not them....me.