December 31, 2016

To the friendly student tax preparer:

Hi, it’s Shady Slim again. I just got back from my 55th birthday party, and I’m told that you need some more information from me in order to complete my tax return. I’m an open book! I’ll tell you whatever I think you need to know.

Let me tell you a few more things about my life. As you may recall, I am divorced from my wife, Alice, who pays me alimony. I know that it’s unusual, but I have custody of my son, Shady, Jr. The judge owed me a few favors and I really love the kid. He lives with me full-time and my wife gets him every other weekend. I pay the vast majority of my son’s expenses. I think Alice should have to pay more child support, but she doesn’t have to pay a dime over $3,000 a year. The judge didn’t owe me that much, I guess.

I had to move after getting my job at Roca Cola. We moved on September 26 of this year, and I worked my job at Roca Cola for the rest of the year. I still live in the same state, but I moved 560 miles away from my old house. I went to my new town two weeks before my actual move to go house-hunting. That that cost me a total of $550. I hired a moving company to move our stuff at a cost of $2,500, and I drove Junior in my car. Junior and I got a hotel room along the way that cost us $85 (I love Super 8!). We spent $50 on meals on the way to our new home. Oh yeah, I took Junior to a movie on the way and that cost $30.

Can you believe I’m still paying off my student loans, even after 15 years? I paid a total of $915 in interest on my old student loans this year. But hey, I can deduct student loan interest, so that’s ok.

Remember when I told you about that guy that hit me with his car? I had a bunch of medical expenses that were not reimbursed by the lawsuit or by my insurance. I incurred a total of $21,000 in medical expenses, and I was only reimbursed for $9,000. Good thing I can write off medical expenses, right?

I contributed a lot of money to charity this year (and have receipts and documentation for all of my contributions). I’m such a nice guy! I gave $2,000 in cash to the March of Dimes. I contributed some of my old furniture to the church. It was some good stuff! I contributed a red velvet couch and my old recliner. The furniture is considered vintage and is worth $8,000 today (the appraiser surprised me!), even though I only paid $1,500 for it back in the day. When I contributed the furniture, the pastor said he didn’t like the fabric and was going to sell the furniture to pay for some more pews in the church. Some people just have no taste, right? Roca Cola had a charity drive for the United Way this year and I contributed $240. Turns out, I barely even miss it, because Roca Cola takes it right off my paycheck every month…$80 a month starting in October. My pay stub verifies that I contributed the money to the United Way. Oh, one other bit of charity from me this year. An old buddy of mine was down on his luck. He lost his job and his house. I gave him $300 to help him out and he lived with me from July thru the end of the year (he even moved with us).

I paid a lot of money in interest this year. I paid a total of $1850 in personal credit card interest. I paid $14,000 in interest on my home mortgage. I also paid $2,500 in real estate taxes for my new house. My car loan cost me $600 in interest, and the tags cost me another $50. I paid car insurance of $1200. It’s expensive having a car!! The property insurance on my house was even more, $3000.

A few other things I want to tell you about this year. Someone broke into my house and stole my kid’s brand new bicycle and my set of golf clubs. The total loss from theft was $1900. I made a claim with my home insurance company and they only paid me $500. I’ve paid them a bunch more than that in premiums! I paid $175 in union dues this year. I had to pay $2,300 for new suits for my job. Roca Cola requires its managers to wear suits every day on the job. I spent a total of $1,300 to pay for gas to commute to my job this year.

Oh, this is pretty cool. I’ve always wanted to be a firefighter. I spent $1,500 in tuition to go to the local firefighter’s school. I did this because someone told me that I can deduct the tuition as an itemized deduction, so the money would be coming back to me.

Remember, you’ve already calculated my income and you just need to make the changes from all of this new information I gave you. Just in case you calculated my income wrong before, you should fix it first.

That should be all the information you need right now. Please calculate my taxable income and complete pages 1 and 2 of Form 1040 (through line 47) and Schedule A. You’re still doing this for free, right? Maybe I can bring you some Roca Cola!!!

Turn in this tax return and your last return with it. It should be in the correct order. This return (stapled, in order), Form 1040 page 1 and 2, Schedule A, calculations, assumptions, Return 2 with the rubric. Please let me know if any of your classmates worked on it with you so I can get them some Roca Cola too!