Re: Hardest part about doing taxes Message #10 Posted by Nenad (Croatia) on 3 Mar 2010, 3:10 a.m., in response to message #9 by Michael Meyer
Yes, it is essential to double check the output (spreadsheet figures) by my wife's HP12C (btw, dr Mike, she is your colleague, but a pediatrician).
From time to time it happens that the original form is stupid and
requires you to enter the same figure (e.g. life insurance premium) into two different cells in the spreadsheet. Normally, the actual calculation can take only one of them into account. You do not know which one. It is the best practice to go through the output manually (meaning with a HP calculator), to help you check the figures mentally.
The main advantage of the spreadsheet is the possibility of "what if". You replace one expense with a zero and see what happens.
However, the spreadsheet is useful as
it produces the filled form you have only to print into pdf,
and file both the xls and pdf versions together.
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