A taxing problem

A taxing problem

Like many of you I recently spent some time preparing my taxes. For an engineer�for whom solving problems is something that comes naturally�this annual ritual should have been a piece of cake, right?

And I thought engineering calculus was complicated!

Unfortunately “some time” in this case meant spending several frustrating hours working through one page after another of confusing forms and instructions. Years of calculus and statistics schooling, programming experience, and even some skills learned in the financial markets were of no help.

For example, one of the 19 steps in one worksheet instructed “Enter the smaller of line 15 or 16, but do not enter less than 0.” In my case I had a small loss on one line and a gain on the other. So what to enter here?

Of course I instinctively approached this as an engineering/math problem. However, I was immediately faced with a conundrum.

If I can't enter a negative number (a loss), then do I ignore the loss and enter the smallest positive number�that is, the gain? Do I take the absolute values of the amounts and then compare them? Or do I substitute a “0” for the negative number and then enter that?

I knew of course that the “correct” answer was almost certainly going to be the one that resulted in me owing the most tax. But the convoluted nature of the worksheet offered no clues up front as to how the magnitude of the value entered here might affect the end result.

I eventually ended up doing two calculations to be on the safe side, and ended up entering “0.” While resolving this particular ambiguity didn't take more than a few minutes from start to finish, it wouldn't have been necessary at all if the form's instructions had been clear and explicit to begin with.

When I later shared my frustration with several coworkers�including the company mail clerk�they unsympathetically asked if I was so smart why didn't I just have a professional tax preparer handle my returns, as they did?

I'm still trying to come up with a good answer to that.

R. Pell

rpell@hearst.com