Wednesday, February 22, 2006
Always ask for a receipt
Luanne Rife
Recent columns
- Incentives to do business in Roanoke
- In support of informed opinions
- When values slide, rates rise
- City taxes fly through loophole
From the RoundTable blog
Doesn't matter whether a pimple-faced adolescent salesclerk or the Internal Revenue Service is doing the asking, one question never fails to intimidate: Do you have a receipt?
Well, of course I do. Somewhere. Then the hunt. Through the folds of my purse, where I find plenty of receipts that momentarily distract me as I spot phone numbers scribbled on the backs, without names of course. Then through the junk drawers, of which each room in the house must have at least one. Through the "important" papers' files. Closet shelves. In backpacks. And lunch boxes. And shoeboxes. And glove compartments. And under car mats and into crevices, where it is guaranteed that for every crumpled receipt discovered, a fossilized french fry will rest nearby.
To avoid this hunt I rarely return anything. Most broken, unworkable, wrong-size, really stupid impulse buys can be shoved into a junk drawer. But the tax man ... well, he can't be avoided.
So after a flurry of receipt gathering, I recently found myself at command central, or what doubles for that in my house, smack dab in the middle of my bed surrounded by stacks of paper.
Having moved in June, I had two state forms to dispatch. I reached for the Virginia's Part-Year Resident paperback entitled "Instructions for Preparing Form 760PY." I wondered about the book's authors at the Virginia Department of Taxation and concluded they are fans of satire and mysteries as this page turner was generously laced with both.
The mystery begins with the opening line, an intriguing request for adjusted gross income (total of Line 32, Col. A1 and B1, Part 1, on Page 2). The reader (referred to as the filer) must really start in the middle then, and work both ends. Not the easiest plot to comprehend, but OK.
So off I go, catching myself before I make a huge blunder. Do not use Column A. That is reserved for "spouse," as if I need the commonwealth of Virginia to remind me (I am using my bed as a desk, for crying out loud. Married people do the decent thing and take over the kitchen table.) that I lack Column A material. "All other filers," which means me, are relegated to the Column B list. Sigh. Such is life.
With that squared away, I move onto the next chapter and must figure out what to put on the "special fixed date conformity addition" line. I sincerely hope the answer is zero because it involves "bonus depreciation" here, adjustments there, and I'm certain I don't have a receipt or even standard depreciation to qualify. I read on and hit another snag: "transitional modifications." This requires entering "the amount necessary to prevent the deduction of any item properly deductible in determining a tax under prior Virginia state law." Phew. Whatever. I mark zero.
Moving along, I am especially relieved that I am neither elderly nor poor, as I would need to disturb my papers and take a nap in order to harness the necessary energy to attack those series of worksheets.
Instead, I skip these and near the final chapter, but first I must find my Prorated Exemption Amount (See instructions to prorate using the Ratio Schedule). The instructions assure that I will find the schedule on page 26 of these very instructions. I quickly turn and instead find Part V -- Contributions and Consumer's Use Tax.
Dang. I must have read it wrong. I double check. Still page 26. OK, maybe the book's wrong. Fifteen minutes later, I find it on page 30, but not before I find myself remarking, no wonder Virginians hate taxes. It's not the money, rather the complicated systems.
Not long after I moved here I endured a series of lectures on the car tax debacle that always finished with: It's too complicated to understand. No it doesn't make sense, but that's Virginia. Surely, I thought, that car tax thing was an anomaly.
That was before I filled out Form 760PY.
If that weren't enough evidence, the Senate's gas-tax-that-isn't-a-tax plan is. This scheme would add a tax to wholesale prices that everyone knows get passed along to consumers. But lawmakers don't want voters thinking they are paying more taxes. So gas customers can ask for a rebate. All they need do is save their receipts and mail them in twice a year to claim their $20 or $30. As if anyone will. That most likely is the point. I'm catching on.
