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Wednesday, February 23, 2005

Life's invariants


Some things about life never change. Of course other things change, and when these two forces meet it can sometimes be not as nice as you would like. For example, taxes are one of life's invariant things. They come every year.

Unfortunately for me, or maybe fortunately, my life is completely different this year. I bought a house, I had a lot of medical expenses. My spouse might count as disabled; or maybe not.

I find that I have no idea how to do my taxes this year. And more than that, I'm not actually that interested in piling through stacks of forms trying to decipher whether they actually apply to me. I know that is very un-mathematician. But I would rather sit down with someone who does this all of the time and ask for help. Next year I promise to do them on my own, assuming I've learned from this year.

I'd be glad to accept recommendations for the job. Since I've never actually hired my taxes out, I don't know who to ask.

I know some would suggest it, but I'll probably not just go out and buy software. For one thing, I don't have a (Windows) computer to run it on, so I'd have to buy that software first and find space to install it. Then there would be the emotional suffering of agreeing to a proprietary software license...