Laugh of the Day

[kcjenkins]

[taxtrio]

So, so true!

[kcjenkins]

Time really does change our perceptions, doesn't it. Remember the first time you used a computer to prepare a ta return instead of ink on a preprinted form? Remember "overlays"? Or did you hold out long enough to skip the overlays?

[Catherine]

I skipped the overlays.

But on time -- a character in a book I read some time ago had a fabulous statement about time. She said, "Time doesn't fly; it damned near evaporates on you!" And she was SO right.

[JohnH]

I remember formatting spreadsheets in Appleworks running on an Apple II Gs computer, which I then printed on a dot matrix printer and then photocopied using an overlay. Even made my own overlays on special acetate paper.

[kcjenkins]

Of course, the BIG change is in the software. Early "tax programs" were much like spreadsheets, they calculated, but you had to know 'what goes where, and why' and what forms to use, etc.

[JohnH]

That's so true. In the early years I had one set of custom spreadsheets (which I bought, rather than design myself), which required me to choose a different spreadsheet for each filing status (S, MFS, HOH, MFJ). There wasn't any error trapping either - if I discovered at the end that I had chosen the wrong spreadsheet, there was nothing to do but enter everything again on the correct one. I was thrilled when a lookup table made it possible to combine all the tax calculations on a single spreadsheet that made the calculation based on a "Filing Status" code entry.