! It's Time to Do Taxes!
Choose one: download a tax program OR visit your local library
? Congratulations! You found a tax program. You get:
**10 life experience
**Your faction with Corporate America increased by 5!
! Pay the Program
Give the tax program your credit card information! (This may involve a subquest: Find the Wallet?)
? You successfully entered your credit card information. Well done! You get:
**a credit card charge
! Where are the Forms?
The Tax Program needs help! It wants you to find:
* Your W-2 form
* 1099 Div forms
* Charitable donation receipts
* Real Estate tax forms
* 1098 Mort forms
* Expense information
Bring these forms to your computer. Hurry, Bardiac! The national debt is growing every minute! In order to make this quest more challenging, we've disabled in-life mapping. Hurry!
? Good job, Bardiac! You got here just in time. The national debt is about to explode! You found all the forms you needed. You get:
**1 paper cut experiences
! AGI is not Agility! (low level)
The program can't go on without information from last year's tax return! Brave the piles of paperwork and find the form.
? You're looking pretty ragged, Bardiac, but at least you got the forms and got out alive. You get:
**1 sneezing fit
! Input Information!
Work carefully, Bardiac, and put all the numbers in the right place! If you make a mistake, you may be audited, so be extra careful and double check everything!
? You input the numbers, but something appears to be wrong. You get:
**25 additional blood pressure points!
! Recheck the Numbers!
The tax program has detected a problem, Bardiac! Go back and recheck all the numbers, just to make sure.
? You've checked and rechecked the numbers, but the tax program can't quite believe what it sees. Are you sure that all professors don't make six figure incomes? You get:
**10 experience with depression
! Find the State! (low level)
The tax program needs you to find your state and download the state program. If you didn't pay for it yet, redo Pay the Program quest.
? You chose Walkerstan as your state! You sure aren't smart, Bardiac! You get:
**10 experience with regret
! Input More Information
The state program has successfully inported the numbers you put in your federal return (better hope you did that right!). Now it needs to check some special tax breaks for your state. Choose one or more from the list:
* I have farm income
* I'm a homesteader
* I'm a corporate raider
* I suck
? You chose "I suck," Bardiac! Well done! You get no special tax breaks from Walkerstan. Do not collect $200! You get:
**20 more points of blood pressure
! Submit your Taxes!
The program is ready to submit your taxes, Bardiac. All you have to do is enter your checking account information. We promise not to take out any money we're not supposed to. Really!
? Congratulations, Bardiac! You submitted your taxes! You get:
** a tax refund, soon... we hope; that and $5 will get you a small coffee at *$.
** your faction with the IRS increased! (Now at "taxpayer")
** your faction with state government increased! (Now at "hostile")
** your roads still won't be well-maintained, nor will state workers ever get a raise.
Ah, the joys of tax time. We're still waiting on our tax forms here in Canuckistan so I can't even think about doing taxes.
ReplyDeleteIt's funny, Mike is dead set against tax software. (Given he has a degree in CS, it's also quite ironic, but I guess his experience interning for a programming company filled him with cynicism) so we do this all manually. Given that I have an erratic stream of non-university income, that becomes wildly complicated. *sigh* So not looking forward to the experience.
I know this comes out of real frustration and anger, but take comfort in the fact that you wrote one of your funniest posts in a long time, Bardiac! Also the geekiest: I did not expect you to sound quite so knowledgeable about the format of WoW quests.
ReplyDeleteBest of luck to you and your neighbors in completing the "Recall the Boss" quest in Walkerstan!
Thanks, Janice, mine aren't that complicated, and the tax program seems to work well for me. I keep all the tax stuff together in a big envelop all year, so it's not actually that difficult and doesn't take that long.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Dr. K. I was disappointed all day yesterday that no one commented! I was more trying to be funny than frustrated.
I think it would be amusing to do a course on quest lit and do the assignments as quests, and that got me thinking about doing other stuff as quests.