none of the above ([info]aisa0) wrote,
@ 2008-04-15 17:01:00
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Entry tags:hacking, taxes

Taxes filed.
On Sunday, two of [info]yarrowkat's friends in the art department (Julia and Josh) stopped by to photo us in her yurt. They're doing a photo series on people in mobile housing. As they were setting up, Julia snapped tons of photos with a digital camera, while Josh painstakingly set up what can only be described as an ancient camera.

He spent so much time doing it that he started to get ribbed for the fact that the digital camera had already been through dozens of shots, and he was only going to get one or two. All the same, I found myself relating deeply to the act of interacting with the camera.

It wasn't the picture so much as the process. I often find myself doing things the hard way because I can control and understand the process as I'm doing it. People watching me work on my computer are equally split between "Wow, I can't believe how much work that just took you." and "Wow, that was completely amazing."

Which is a long way to get to my point. I just finished my taxes today. I probably didn't do them right. This is my first year dealing with a K-1. The IRS publishes a great document on how to take a K-1 and translate it into fields on your 1040. Following these instructions from a wizard designed to hide all that complexity from me was a complete pain. With the added bonus that I couldn't really check whether it was right.

Next year, I'm going to give Open Source Tax Solver a go. It's designed for people that don't mind reading IRS publications. After my experience using a program trying to *hide* that from me, I'm so ready to try something that isn't shy about presuming you know what you're doing.

For some reason, I think this has something to do with spending an hour with an archaic camera. But I can't explain how.


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[info]yarrowkat
2008-04-15 11:18 pm UTC (link)
For some reason, I think this has something to do with spending an hour with an archaic camera. But I can't explain how.

i'm not sure, either. but next time Josh comes by, i'll tell him how much you liked that camera. :)

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[info]aisa0
2008-04-15 11:18 pm UTC (link)
*laughs*

Thank you. ^_^

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[info]_wirehead_
2008-04-16 12:25 am UTC (link)
i love real cameras, even though i've now mostly switched to using my spiffy DSLR. the DSLR gives me a lot of what i like about film cameras -- the control over erudite things like focal depth, the physical shutter, the ability to change lenses.

as for taxes... i've had pretty good luck doing mine with the IRS documents open in one window and a helpful online wizardy thing in the other (i was using TurboTax Online for years and years, but they've pissed me off in a number of ways, so i did it with H&R Block this year).

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[info]aisa0
2008-04-16 03:05 pm UTC (link)
Even Josh, with his ancient camera, snapped photos with his digital. I think he uses it as an adjunct to more modern technology, not a replacement. I know I do accounting both on the computer and on paper. The computer is faster, but the paper is a backup record and in many ways easier to visualize. I try to see them as complimentary.

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[info]royal_spice
2008-04-16 12:27 am UTC (link)
I sympathize with this. :)

I used tax software *one* year. And I mean, only one. All other years I'd done it myself (7 years) or used an accountant (five years). Having all the process hidden behind the scenes of the tax software, I felt less sure than if I'd cranked them by hand, that the final product was actually correct.

Normally, I like to check my own work, understand why I'm answering a question (which goes a long way toward knowing how to actually answer it)...one year, I even found a mistake in math made by the Accountant (he was embarassed). ;) So, my rule now is either do it myself (*by hand*), or take it to an accountant (and then double check it *by hand*). I guess, ultimately, I don't trust these new-fangled computers. ;)

I know nothing of this K1, and I think I'm glad that I don't.

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[info]aisa0
2008-04-16 03:45 pm UTC (link)
Way back in the day, most computer software was designed to aid paper-based problem solving. So you would have programs that were very "open" with regard to how they did their work, but they required a good understanding of the problem domain.

These days it is more common to hide the complexity of the problem domain and make the software easier to use. In cases like this is does lead to an inability to check results, as there is the presumption you wouldn't know how to do that.

It is one reason why most of the software I use is quite ancient. :-D

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I've been using TurboTax, but they're slipping...
[info]kbyrd
2008-04-16 01:30 pm UTC (link)
I've been an Intuit fanboy (Quicken, TurboTax) fanboy for many yeats. For the last several years, I used TurboTax online and started filling out the forms and questions right away as tax docs rolled in. By late Feb or March, I'm pretty much done.

So, the web TurboTax thing has gotten more and more question-y and wizard-y. This year they removed the "save your ass no matter what" feature: "look at form". With this feature, you could go from whatever question/wizard thing they were asking you to the exact set of boxes on the IRS form or worksheet. Sometimes you just have to do this. Often, IRS instructions say things like: "simply fill in the amount in box 145f on form 1911". It's really helpful to see my 1040 in progress within TurboTax. This year, I couldn't find a way to do that.


sigh. software gets worse.

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Re: I've been using TurboTax, but they're slipping...
[info]aisa0
2008-04-16 03:03 pm UTC (link)
The frustrating thing, of course, is that you don't make the wizard any less powerful by allowing access to the form. My guess is that someone made the decision to hide the information purely because it allowed people to copy the form out and transcribe it manually. Since TurboTax doesn't charge you until you file, this allows someone to use TurboTax without paying for it.

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Re: I've been using TurboTax, but they're slipping...
[info]kbyrd
2008-04-16 03:14 pm UTC (link)
Maybe, though their form viewer was clearly an app rendering data live and not just a pdf viewer. It was designed such that you couldn't even view the whole form all at once, so even screen capturing to print the form would be tough.

I think somebody decided user-friendly meant hiding the tax forms. The "quick zoom" feature was their catch-all. If you assume the TurboTax wizard will never be complete for everyone, quickzoom let's the 1% of those who have special needs still use TurboTax and be happy. This "catch all" theme seems to be popping up all around me lately in software (both mine and others).

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Re: I've been using TurboTax, but they're slipping...
[info]aisa0
2008-04-16 03:46 pm UTC (link)
Oddly, that has been coming up for me too. I have been designing web-based data entry systems, but giving direct access to the database, through MS Access, to people that really, really need to see the raw data.

I rarely have to restore anything, and it is a good way to make sure my backups work. :-)

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