But Little Jimmy Did It!

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goodmorningkeywest.com “We’re gonna just love this campus!”

Work on Key West’s new Horace O’Bryant Middle School began in October; the magnificent first building quickly rose to 56 feet at the peak.

Too bad the Key West City Commission has a teeny little zoning problem. The as-yet-unfinished school project violates the city’s building height restriction. Land development regulations limit building height in that zoning district to 25 feet. Errors in oversight may be involved.

Errors in oversight?

“How do you put up a building that is twice as tall as allowed without somebody noticing?” Rufus asked.

We-ll, several officials have pointed out that the relatively new Key West High School, Marathon High School, Coral Shores High School and Sugarloaf School all violate height regulations in Key West, Marathon and the unincorporated areas.

Heh.

“Ah hah! The old Little-Jimmy-did-it-too defense,” Rufus said. Except the Board used the old “it’s-OK-because-we-did-it-all-these-other-places-too” defense.

Nearby residents think the solution is to tear it down.

Key West finally issued the Monroe County School District a “notice of non-compliance” for the ongoing construction at HOB as the locals call it.

conchscooter.blogspot.com Good plan.

The district doesn’t have to respond to it or even explain why it’s not compliant with city rules. See, the district is its own permitting agency.

The KW mayor also opposes any solution that includes tearing down the building. “We’re trying to work it out with officials from the School District,” he said.

Construction on the five additional buildings — each of which exceeds the height cap — continues. The city’s acting planning director will meet with the school board’s architect in Tampa to go over the plans.

“They’re going to try to come into compliance,” the mayor said.

Uh huh. I’m not sure even Mr. Obama could spin this one.

“Let’s see, now. Let’s see,” the president said when questioned by Faux News’ Sergeant Watchtower. “We have five buildings that stand just two and a half stories taller than anything else in the neighborhood but it’s alright because we created six new jobs with this construction and we painted the roofs green!”

Friday Frump: Sox

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Sex gets better with age. Sox don’t.

I found a hole in another sock after walkies this morning. Sox don’t last as long as they used to. For as long as most folks can remember, I’ve worn white crew sox with work shoes or sneaks. I wear any kind of sox less now than when I was a kid or when I worked in someone else’s office. Even so, they wear faster. We just don’t make sox like we used to.

And who ever thought putting an “X” on the end of a word should make it a plural? There is no singular seck, after all.

Premte Peeves

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Pandora radio adds about 100,000 new users every day on mobile devices like smart phones. Pandora knows your age, gender, ZIP code, and type of music. They target their ads to that. And more.

See, the Pandora smart phone installer does more. It can maraud through your phone, linking the GPS information and your Facebook postings into a seamless picture of who and what you like, buy, eat, and take orally at bedtime.

I shop at the Cost Slasher grocery store downstreet every week or so. Every Sunday, I voluntarily plug in my zip code on the Cost Slasher website to get this week’s grocery flier. That’s a good thing.

Thanks to Pandora and other similar data miners tapping into iPhone’s™ newly discovered iTracker™, though, Cost Slasher could already know that.

My iPhone already knows more about me than I do. I’m pretty sure I don’t want to give every other grocery store within 50 miles of my instant location that advantage whenever I listen to the “radio.”

!@#$%^ Blockheads

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Like millions of Americans (except Rufus), I used tax preparation software again this year. Rufus is about the only individual filer I know who uses a computer and who does his taxes in a spreadsheet.

Like millions of Americans (except Rufus), I wanted to “click here” and have a finished return print out with the stamp(s) already attached.

Sigh.

I don’t much like Intuit’s Tubbo™ Tax™. I’ve had years of experience trying to get that program to manage my not-very-complicated mix of a couple of small businesses and some 1099s from Charles Schwab, a brokerage house of which neither Intuit nor H&R Block has heard. I decided to try the other guys this year.

Yup, I bought into H&R Block At Home™. Deluxe.

Mr. Block will be history here in No Puffin in 2011.

My first run through, it gave me twice the mortgage interest deduction I had entered. I’m sure I made a mistake by putting it in twice, but I have no idea where. I burned down that return and started over using the tax-software-for-dummies interview exclusively.

“That is the problem with these freakin’ programs,” Rufus said. “They presume you have no idea what you are doing (or that you know the software intimately.)”

When I assumed I knew what I was doing, Mr. Block said I would owe a few grand more in taxes than I had already paid in. That was also when I saw Mr. Block had doubled the declarable mortgage interest I claimed.

Time passes.

The time came to checkprint the Vermont return (“full return for filing” the Blockheads call it). Mr. Block did not print the three Vermont homestead claim forms. Vermont has those forms online as PDFs, fortunately, because nobody mails tax booklets any more. Unfortunately, all I can do is print them and fill them out by hand.

Transferring all the appropriate figures from one form to the next (which is why we all buy tax software) and doing the calculations (which is why we all buy tax software) is all on me.

By hand.

!@#$%^ Blockheads.

I don’t care how much trouble Tubbo gave me, at least it printed all the freaking forms I need.

The very nice overseas tech support girl said, “First I want you to reinstall Windows…”

Actually, she sent me a link to download a new copy of the program. Yes, they wanted me to uninstall my current copy of H&R Block At Home™ and install the new copy. As expected, the new copy of the program comes with exactly the same state feature as the purchased CD has, meaning that after I install it, I must then download the Vermont files from exactly the same place I got them last time.

!@#$%^ Blockheads.

So I uninstalled the old version and installed the new one. The uninstall apparently did not remove the registry entries because it knew just where I had left all the data files.

Time passes.

Mr. Block includes an Error Check. It found a bunch, many related to Copy 9 of the Vehicle Worksheet for which the program couldn’t figure out in which Schedule C it belonged. Their Forms Central display is so crammed together that I simply can’t tell what data it has, let alone where it belongs.

Time to checkprint the Vermont return. Again. Everything is still smushed together.

Mr. Block has a nice online forum with bonafide tax experts just moments away to answer your pressing tax questions in real time. I posted as “Disappointed User” yesterday evening.

“Q: This program won’t print anything but squeezed together ‘Not For Filing’ pages.”

Mr. Block answered my question this morning at 4:39 ayem through Kathleen Drenzek, Master Tax Advisor and Enrolled Agent who wrote: “Disappointed, did you try rebooting your computer to see it that works. Or call tech support at 1-800-HRBLOCK.”

Another happy user worried about this:

“Q: software is telling me I sent my tax estimate late and owe a fee- but in RI we got an extension last year. What to do?”

Jayant Kanitkar, Master Tax Advisor and Enrolled Agent wrote: “If you believe otherwise, pay only the amount due.” What, is he nuts?

I think I did resolve the smushy question. When it prints its “mini worksheets,” it sends out the smushed up text you see in the example. When it print the return forms alone, they appear to come out fine.

OK, sort of fine. It is still printing three blank copies of Form 4562-page 1, but I can simply throw those away. And it keeps putting xxxxxxxxxxxxx in for the bank account number. Means no e-filing for me, though.

Looks like I cannot use even the one form TaxCut DID print. Here’s the word from the Vermont Tax Department:

FORMS THAT CANNOT BE PROCESSED
If your filing is not acceptable for our processing equipment, the Department may send your filing back to you… The Department may also transfer your filing information onto acceptable forms but you can be assessed a $25 processing fee that partially covers the costs of transferring the information. Examples of unacceptable filings are: forms marked “draft”, forms not pre-approved by the Department, photocopies of forms, faxed forms, writing in other than blue or black ink, and mixing computer generated forms with forms printed by the Department.

This software used to be called TaxCut but H&R Block wanted to leverage their own name to boost sales.
Why?

If this were my program, I’d never put my name on it. I might call it Rufus’ TaxCut. Anything but Dick’s Own Software.

Despite all that, I made the trip to the post office today. All three returns are in the mail at a cost of only three Forever stamps and two additional ounces at the new-today rate.

I wonder if the IRS shares DNA samples collected today with other agencies.