- Your mother and father used to do income taxes
income taxes for a lot of people.
for a lot of people.
- Yeah, but they did, but how did you know that?
- Well, turns out they were my mother and father as well.
- Okay, right.
- Right, every yearduring income tax season,
Every year during income tax season,
we held the in-process income tax returns
for a couple of dozen friends of mom and dad stacked,
remember, that cabinet in the corner of the kitchen.
- Yeah, now dad was the technical expert.
He knew the detailed tax rules and he liked to show off
and he liked to show off anddo the arithmetic in his head.
and do the arithmetic in his head.
- Now, mom always checked him with an adding machine.
- Mom always checked himwith an adding machine.
She was the organizer of the whole thing.
She kept the documents sorted,
carefully filled in the forms with the final numbers
and made sure that everything got done on time.
- Now they were a good team.
They did returns for a wide variety of people,
individuals, couples and small business people.
- Dad once told me that themost difficult tax returns
- Dad once told me that the most difficult tax returns
were for farmers.
- Farmers?
- Farmers, what's so difficult about a farmers' tax return?
What's so difficult abouta farmer's tax return?
- Well, there are two things.
First, the very nature of a small family farm
is that the household activities
and the business farm activities are inseparably connected.
farm activities, areinseparably connected.
For example, how do you identify the farm-specific portion
of the gasoline bill for the truck
that's used to haul potatoes, take the kids to school,
pick up the grain for the horses, and travel to church?
Second, all-time family farmers were not known
as being the best record keepers in the world.
Dad said that his uncle, Lloyd Stice,
kept his records in typicalsmall farmer fashion,
kept his records in typical small farmer fashion.
A brown grocery sack full of various bits and pieces
of receipts, handwritten notes, seed packets
and who knows what else.
- While farm tax returns were tough,
but mom and dad completed tax returns
for lots of ordinary people
who didn't have complicated tax issues at all.
complicated tax issues at all.
Why did these people need help?
- Hey, lots of us are just intimidated by tax forms.
We don't want to make a mistake
on these official government filings.
official government filings.
- Well, let's do something about that.
Let's practice completing a basic income tax return.