Stupid tax conversation.

[snarp]

Guy With Weapons-Grade Southern Accent: Kentucky Department of Revenue, what can I do for you?

Me: Hi, I have this kind of trivial tax question...

Guy: Well, that's fine, that's just fine.

Me: I'm doing my return, and it's asking me to list all of the out-of-state purchases I made on which I didn't pay 6% sales tax. But, I mean, I ordered a lot of books and stuff online last year -

Guy: Oh, honey, no, that's all right. Just give an estimate of how much it was, you don't want to list every single thing, honey.

Me: So it's okay if I just say, like, "various items bought online throughout the year?"

Guy: That's just fine, honey.

1) I actually think that there were several more honeys in there that I'm missing. I feel as if this conversation's total honey count was six or seven.

2) So even the Department of Revenue thinks that form is stupid - but I actually could have completed it. I possess all of the necessary information. I just called because TurboTax isn't set up so I can cut-and-paste from my spreadsheet, and I didn't want to retype it.

(Is there some sort of twelve-step program for spreadsheet addiction?)

3) I guess he probably found it touchingly naive that someone was bothering to report this. How could they possibly perform an audit?

Comments

[eagle]

California finally got wise about this, and this year you can now just pay a straight percentage of your income as the estimated use tax instead of enumerating all of your out-of-state purchases. It's massively faster, and for me ended up being less tax than I worked out with manually calculating the use tax.

Hopefully there will be more of that.

[thegeekgene]

We discussed this in my political science class. None of the students knew you were even supposed to report that. The professor roundly mocked the girl who started freaking out about it.

(We were talking about revenue the government 'fails to capture', which brings to mind Secret Service agents chasing winged dollars with butterfly nets. When the professor asked for examples, the first thing that fell out of my mouth was 'Moonshine?' She said my heritage was showing.)

[torachan]

People actually report that???