Income taxes finished with a few days to spare. It was more difficult this year because of capital gains on a house sale. I waited almost 30 years to sell, and that was a bad idea. It would have been better to move before price minus basis went over the $250K home sale exclusion.
Back when TurtleSoft made Excel-based estimating and accounting software, a company called Heizer Software sold Excel templates. They had a cheap construction estimator that was our main competitor. Also, worksheets to calculate and print IRS income tax forms. Those were a real time saver: just enter expenses and income, and everything filled in from there. Heizer had annual updates, but they faded away in the late 1990s.
Remarkably, I still use their 25-year-old Excel templates to calculate and print Schedules C and SE, plus the 4562 depreciation form. The spreadsheets just need minor tweaks each year. Heizer’s 1040 form also worked for years, up until ex-President Trump “simplified” it with an extra page and two new forms. Now it needs typing or copy/paste into pdf or e-file.
One extra complexity this year: capital gains were enough to make Social Security taxable. Calculating the amount is an 18-step process. That seemed way more complex than it deserved. At least the math is in a spreadsheet now, so next time will be easier.
Meanwhile, Apple just approved TurtleSoft LLC to get certificates for code signing. It lets us deploy an accounting app that runs on newer Mac OS versions and M-series chips. Our staff is wading into the instructions for that now. Also futzing with the deploy process for Windows.
The limiting factor for progress these days is just plain old complexity. There’s only so much information that one can absorb in a day. Arcane bullshit seeps in even slower.
Getting new processes to work is kinda like mastering a foreign language. It’s all just gibberish at first. The line 6a/6b IRS worksheet equals learning a phrase or two. App deployment is vocabulary to ask directions and order a meal. Writing an entire accounting app needs PhD level fluency a few times over. ¿Hablas español?
Dennis Kolva
Programming Director
TurtleSoft.com
