The ``workstation'', I'm told, is a ``developers laptop'', plus docking station, two monitors, keyboard, and mouse. I trust I can just use the laptop and leave the rest hidden under the bed or something.
We did our taxes this week, or at least ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bunnyhugger did them while getting cross. This was closer to deadline than we've ever done before and we're not going to do it that late again. I grant every year we swear we're going to do it sooner, but, sometime we'll make it.
The frustration was the tax software coming up with the idea that we owed a lot to New Jersey, although less than we'd withheld. And then that we owed a crazy lot to Michigan, enough that we'd get hit with a lateness penalty. And no fiddling around with the tax software made this make sense. After really a quite bad a time we gave up and filed for an extension, and then had the breakthrough which reconciled it all. This, mostly, thanks to bunnyhugger giving up on the online forms and doing it by hand, which allowed her to see what the actual rules are.
The big breakthrough, Garden State-wise is this: the New Jersey income tax is based on what I, as the New Jersey income-earner, collect in pay there. But our rate depends on what we as a couple earn. Unless we file separately, in which case it depends only on what I as an individual earn. New Jersey allows us to file separately, even if we file Federal taxes --- or Michigan taxes --- jointly. Our couples income puts us in a higher New Jersey tax bracket. This may explain why we had so much trouble getting the withholding right in past years. But it is a great relief to have New Jersey's taxes sorted out. For a moment I thought about refiling previous years to see if that helped but no reasonable return could make that worth dealing with.
The other breakthrough was in sorting out for the tax software how much of our income was earned in Michigan versus how much in New Jersey, an oversight we kept making as we get more agitated. Once we had that figured out, though, everything fell in line. We do not owe an absurd amount to Michigan (Michigan instead owes us a modest amount) and we feel more confident that we'll have this working next year.
And, you know, the tax prep industry is a fundamentally immoral activity. There is no legitimate reason for the federal and state tax agencies to not calculate and complete the tax forms and send them to us for purposes of correction only.
Let me carry on walking around town, here. This isn't my town, this is bunnyhugger's parents' town.
Here's another view of that memorial stone and much of the length of the island and how it splits the river.
And to downtown! Looks a good bit warmer than on that snowy Christmas Day walk, doesn't it?
Emojis done in construction paper outside the Bohm Theatre.
The other side of the theater.
Squirrel, rabbit, and ... uh ... insect? ... figures in one of the storefronts.
Skeleton sculptures in the other window of that same storefront.
One of the parks has this rock dedicated to a longtime president of the town Chamber of Commerce.
Albion's train station! Here's the bus station end.
Catching the train station in the afternoon sun.
And here's the station seen from the west so you can actually see it.
Trivia: During the Napoleon Wars the British salt tax (on Britons) was raised to its greatest height. It was abolished entirely by 1825. Source: The Great Hedge of India: The Search for the Living Barrier That Divided a People, Roy Moxham.
Currently Reading: Miscellaneous comic books. Into a bunch of Dell Comics Pogo books from the 50s, which is mostly nice. Like, the original stories by early-50s Walt Kelly are pretty good apolitical slapstick and wordplay strips. The occasional early-40s story resurrected is ... you can see where Walt Kelly was getting to where he would be.
