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Dislike the IRS Pubs, examples, other IRS materials?


Catherine

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What frequently drives me nuts about the pubs is their choice of examples to illustrate a point. It's as though a group sits around and tries to think up the most exotic or unusual set of circumstances to explain how the law applies in a given situation. Meanwhile, an example intended to clarify a high-probability set of circumstances is nowhere to be found.

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On ‎10‎/‎26‎/‎2018 at 4:51 AM, JohnH said:

What frequently drives me nuts about the pubs is their choice of examples to illustrate a point. It's as though a group sits around and tries to think up the most exotic or unusual set of circumstances to explain how the law applies in a given situation. Meanwhile, an example intended to clarify a high-probability set of circumstances is nowhere to be found.

Ain't it the truth?  I swear they stay up nights dreaming up the most unlikely of possible scenarios to illustrate anything.  They'll say something like "a part-time exchange student from Bora-Bora who designs software during the week and picks fruit on weekends is an HB-1 non-resident alien who also sweeps out the premises of a non-profit organization nights for amounts which vary according to the phases of the moon. The amount of his earnings subject to {whatever} is..."

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In addition to the ridiculously-defined circumstances presented by Black Bart, there are an abundance of cross-references to other regs, such as:

a part-time exchange student from Bora-Bora who designs software [described in reg 1.2637-4(i)(6)]during the week and picks fruit on weekends is an HB-1 non-resident alien [described in reg 1.934-18(viii)(12)(a)] who also sweeps out the premises of a non-profit organization [see also reg 1.436-7(xii)(2)(j)(iii)] nights for amounts which vary according to the phases of the moon. The amount of his earnings subject to {whatever} is...

They assume we can open 15 windows just to research the question, which may have been as simple as:

"Are unemployment benefits taxable?"

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4 hours ago, JohnH said:

I'm the culprit who committed the derailing offense on the original thread.   I apologize for having started down that rabbit trail since the question remained unanswered at the time.  I'll plead "off-season antics" in my defense.  :)

Catherine's post helped lead you astray. 🤨 😜

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6 hours ago, JohnH said:

I'm the culprit who committed the derailing offense on the original thread.   I apologize for having started down that rabbit trail since the question remained unanswered at the time.  I'll plead "off-season antics" in my defense.  :)

The consensus appears to be that you are absolved, my son.  Go and sin no more.

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On ‎10‎/‎27‎/‎2018 at 7:37 PM, jklcpa said:

You, Black Bart, should repent for choosing to ignore my cute cat-train derailment gif and continuing down a dark and dangerous path. 😄

Well, I know ignorance of the law is no excuse and I sure am sorry about it but I don't have any idea what a "gif" is; much less how to derail one.  Is it anything like those PDF things (I can't find them anywhere either)? :(

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GIF stands for graphics interchange format and appears as an animated image in a post.  I posted the one of the kitty derailing a model train hoping that posters wouldn't continue to derail the Land Percentage topic, but you apparently missed my point and posted off-topic there too, so I ended up moving all the derailing posts out of that topic and into this one.  Clearer now?

Sorry, I was trying to be cute/funny with the kitty gif and my post here above.  Guess that didn't work out too well.  

 

Edit - the gif was in Abby Normal's topic "Farmers, corporations and FUTA".  I was mistaken for a moment since it was the second topic this week that derailed that I had to move posts.  

I was trying to be more gentle than my usual cracking of the whip and yelling at people.  Sigh, sometimes nothing works and it's hard to find a happy medium or balance. It's coming up on Halloween so you all can just picture me in my usual witch costume. :(

Edited by jklcpa
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