07:43 – It’s amazing what a difference a tiny little thing like a comma can make. I saw the following on Wikipedia last night:
1520 – Citizens of Toledo, Castile, who were opposed to the rule of the foreign-born Charles V, rose up in revolt when the royal government attempted to unseat radical city councilors.
I think what they meant to say was:
1520 – Citizens of Toledo, Castile who were opposed to the rule of the foreign-born Charles V rose up in revolt when the royal government attempted to unseat radical city councilors.
I was reminded of Oscar Wilde: “I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again.” Non-writers think he was kidding; writers know he wasn’t.
With the taxes finished, I’m back to working heads-down on the forensics book. Yesterday, though, I spent some time putting together a basic web site for the science kits. As of now, all I have is landing pages for the chemistry kit and the biology kit. I need more than that, ideally before the biology book hits the bookstores.
13:02 – Here’s irony. Barbara and I have been watching Heartland on Netflix streaming. They have the first two series: 13 episodes in series 1 and 18 in series 2. Series 3 and series 4 are out on DVD, and series 5 is currently running. (Netflix Canada streaming has series 1 through 4, but I won’t complain too much since it’s a CBC program and Canadians generally get screwed on Netflix streaming anyway.)
So, a few minutes ago, I decided screw it. I’d just upgrade our Netflix account from streaming-only to streaming + one DVD at a time. The change took effect immediately, and I headed over to my disc queue to add Heartland series 3 and 4. The only problem was, Netflix doesn’t have series 3 and 4 on DVD. They don’t even have series 2. Incredibly, they don’t even have all of series 1. They have, on DVD, just the first half of series 1. Geez.
Of course, I could just torrent down series 3 and 4 and even series 5 through the latest episode that’s run. But that’s a pain in the petunia, so (much though I hate the idea) I may actually buy the DVDs for series 3 and 4, or at least series 3. I see that Amazon sells those two seasons for $27 and $40 each.
RBT wrote:
It’s amazing what a difference a tiny little thing like a comma can make. I saw the following on Wikipedia last night:
1520 – Citizens of Toledo, Castile, who were opposed to the rule of the foreign-born Charles V, rose up in revolt when the royal government attempted to unseat radical city councilors.
I think what they meant to say was:
1520 – Citizens of Toledo, Castile who were opposed to the rule of the foreign-born Charles V rose up in revolt when the royal government attempted to unseat radical city councilors.
Commas have always confused me a bit. I’m never sure whether to put one after Castile in your example, but it seems to belong. Isn’t the word Castile in apposition, and so a comma would be required? And isn’t “who were opposed to the rule of the foreign-born Charles V” in apposition, and so a comma required?
One can always take the strict grammar route…apposition, etc, etc…but much easier and much more effective is what, when I was teaching English to non-English speakers, I used to do and explain. What is the purpose of stops, commas, colons, etc, etc? My explanation is, especially within a sentence, that they indicate where one, if speaking it, would pause to take a breath… short or long. On this basis, try reading the passage aloud and note where you take a pause, even the briefest of one. On this basis, I would conclude that the original passage is probably the best.Maybe in strict grammatical terms not; but do we really want to revert to the example of, say Dryden, who did not know whether a piece of poetry or prose was good until he had translated it into Latin and back?
The first comma implies strongly that *all* of the citizens were opposed and that all rose up in revolt. Eliminating that comma converts the meaning from “all citizens” being opposed and revolting to “that subset of citizens who were opposed” revolting. With the first comma gone, the second is unneeded.
Oh, I agree. I am not a proponent of strict grammar, but subtleties in punctuation can dramatically change the meaning of a sentence. The classic example used by supporters of the serial comma is: “I’d like to thank my parents, Ayn Rand and God.”
Despite that, I prefer the British usage, which argues that the comma substitutes for the word “and”. “The balls are red, green, and blue” thereby translates to “The balls are red and green and and blue.” Same thing with putting quote marks inside the punctuation. I prefer the British method:
“red”, “green” and “blue”.
Rather than the US:
“red,” “green,” and “blue.”
if for no other reason than that the British method is accurate, while the US method may include material inside the quotes that was not present in the original material.
I’ve had to train myself to use the American forms, because otherwise the O’Reilly copy editors go crazy adding serial commas and moving quote marks inside the punctuation.
I just ordered some stuff from Amazon. I needed a charger USB cable for an IPOD Shuffle (the really tiny one) as my wife lost the original (which will be found when the replacement arrives). Apple wanted $18.95. NFW. So I ordered from Amazon, a package deal for $8.95 with free shipping. A charging cradle, USB charging cable, and USB charging plug with no cable. One of the items comes from Hong Kong, cost $1.79. They are shipping it for free, arrival on May 25th. How in the hell do they make any money on this when shipping is probably more than the product?
Just finished the data entry work into the tax software for my taxes. I did not keep exact track of how much time I spent, but I am sure it is at least 40 hours total. Since we are doing more video editing work, and I have to keep an exact time sheet on that, I will do the same next year for the taxes.
Each year, I think I have things well-organized for entry (which I have done in spurts starting way back in January), but it always ends up that I have to find some document in my paper files and get a figure from that. Took a couple hours today, to locate a file from last year that I had accidentally stored in the wrong place. Starting next year, I am going to scan everything that comes in. That will not help me until 2 years out, but at least when I need a figure from the past, it will be on the computer, not in a misplaced physical file.
This year, because I did not make equal payments of estimated taxes (I got more work last year than the year before), according to the IRS, I should have known that would be the case and paid a higher estimated amount right from the get-go. The penalty is minimal, but if I file for an extension, that penalty rises significantly, so there is pressure to get this done now and not file for an extension. My work is not seasonal, so I cannot claim that; in some months there is work almost every day, and in other months, there is hardly any, with no rhyme nor reason for that workload changing. I suspect the IRS give businesses more latitude to work with such an fluctuations, than they do an individual like me.
So now I have to print the stuff out, write checks including those for estimated payments, print the envelopes, and fill out the Certificate of Mailing forms for each–still a lot of work. A trip to the post office tomorrow, and it will all be over for another year. If it weren’t for the tax software, I suspect it would take double or triple the amount of time I spent. When my parents passed on, the issues were so complex that I had to hire an accountant to file the taxes.
You can pay estimated taxes at least 100% (in some cases 110%) of your prior year’s taxes and not be subject to any penalty.
I think that only works if your income is fairly steady. I had no tax due when I was in Germany; first year I was back, it was something like $34 as my US income was ramping up (in the poverty zone first year) and anything under $100 does not have to be paid, but last year was in the thousands. I paid the $34–even though I did not have to,–but that did not protect me from penalty–even when further, I sent in increasing, but uneven amounts as my income rose fairly dramatically during last year.
Somehow, imagination is lacking in Washington as to the possible scenarios that might be involved. Worse, most people don’t really know what effects their circumstances cause, until they sit down to actually calculate and fill in the forms for the past year. Requiring them to know what to do before that time, is just unrealistic, IMO. As it turns out, I was only a couple hundred off in my estimate (underpaid), but because I did not send in like amounts for all 4 quarters, I get penalized–even though, with a new job, I had no idea whatsoever the kind of income I might be making.
Something does not sound right Chuck. My research found this information.
Indeed, the Internal Revenue Service will charge you a penalty if you haven’t paid 90% of what you owe for the tax year or an amount equal to 100% of your tax liability for the prior year, whichever is smaller.
In other words, if you owed a total of $25,000 in taxes last year, and will owe $35,000 this year, you’re in the clear as long as you have paid at least $25,000 by Dec. 31.
From this it would indicate that if you matched last years tax amount by the end of the year you should be OK.
The reference is from CNN Money. Here is the link.
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/moneymag/money101/lesson18/index5.htm
…as long as you have paid at least $25,000 by Dec. 31.
The deadline for the fourth quarter estimated tax payment is a a bit later than that, for what that is worth.
My experience, and that of various accountants I’ve talked with, is that the IRS feels no compunction to follow the law or its own rules and that its computer programs likewise do not necessarily follow the law. You might be automatically dinged for insufficient payments, even though you followed the written requirements, because the software didn’t account for all of the circumstances. You might be maliciously dinged by an IRS worker because she feels the need to impose a penalty to pump up her own numbers or beacause you weren’t sufficiently obsequious. In either case you can fight it, but the cost to fight it is larger than the penalty that was imposed. And even if you win all that’ll happen is the penalty is cancelled; you won’t get reimbursed for your costs.
Derp. “Compulsion”, not “compunction”.
I posted your experience with Netflix and Heartland on a private investment board that discusses Netflix. I’ve had two replies.
My quick search turned up Season 1 on DVD… with an “unknown availability”. No other results found. I don’t even see the streaming for Season 1 or Season 2.
I don’t know anything about this show, but best I can tell, season 2 isn’t available at all in the US yet. June 5th looks like the release date . . .
http://www.tvshowsondvd.com/news/Heartland-Season-2/16788
Following up on that link…
In the USA, however, only the first season has been officially distributed on DVD…all other season sets “for sale” have been imported from up north. But now eOne is formally making Heartland – The Complete 2nd Season available in the States, starting June 5th.
You can get away from the penalty for “underpayment” of estimated taxes due to uneven income by doing a special worksheet. TurboTax will do it for you. Essentially, you have to do 4 mini-tax returns by attributing income, expenses, and deductions to the quarter when they happened, then doing a series of calculations. If you keep business records in Quicken or Quick books and set it up properly, it can do a lot of the grunt work by looking at the dates of the entries and sorting it all out. One year the penalty was about $25, so I didn’t do the work of sorting it all out. My time is worth more than that. When it was several hundred dollars, I did the work.
Of course, if you have a windfall in late June or September you are screwed, since you have to file quarterlies before the quarter is over.
I do my estimates pretty simply – I take the current year’s tax return and just fill in the correct income data each quarter in the new year and see what the tax bill is, then send in the appropriate amount. So I have two TurboTax files, my 2011 1040 and the 2012 Q1 1040ES.
That’s weird. I just ordered Heartland: The Complete Third Season on DVD from Amazon (Sold by: 3576728 Canada inc., fulfilled by Amazon US) for $27.41.
I could have ordered the fourth series for $29.99 as well, but I’m hoping Netflix gets series 4 on streaming before we’re ready for it.
On taxes and the IRS, what SteveF said. They *will* get whatever amount of money from us they deem appropriate, by fair means or foul, however long it takes and no matter the consequences, period. You can dot every i and cross every t like a good little do-bee and still get reamed by them, for any reason, or no reason at all. Cut and dried.
I have used H&R Block’s software almost forever. I will never, EVER use any product from Intuit, Adobe, or Ford Motor Company, so that leaves out TurboTax–which, by the way, cheated my lawyer father who used TurboTax in his office before Intuit ever got hold of it. Incompetence abounds: I paid property taxes on Tiny House today at the Treasurer’s office, and the stamp they used to mark it paid read “April 18” when it should have been “17”. However, that one aside, I think that a lot of so-called “incompetence” these days is intentional.
The penalty is only $11, and the software does not explain exactly why or how it is calculated. I used to know that there were problems if you didn’t make the last quarterly payment by 12/31 of the tax year (regardless of the published deadlines), but have been away so long I forgot and paid it into the next year. That may be where the penalty came from, as there was a dialog message at one point that the 2012 payment could not be credited to 2011, even though it was before 1/15. $11 is not worth my time to challenge it.
My dad practiced in the tax law area for several decades. He always said it really does not matter what the IRS says in a disputed area, because an administrative law judge would make the decision, and as long as you have written law on your side, the judge will obey it. Just like insurance companies who try not to pay out, the IRS tries to get as much as they can. Sorry state of affairs when voluntary honesty does not prevail, but that is one reason there are so many lawsuits these days.