Ah, spring.  Can you feel it?  The sweet chorus of chickadees chirping; “Sun’s up in an hour. Hey. HEY! Fifty-nine minutes now.”  The gentle tingle of an afternoon breeze radiating warmth, hope, and the seeds of renew…ah-Choo! Can you ah pass ah me Choo…a Kleenex?   The mysterious migration from glen to glen of the species taxicus collecticus signaling subtly, almost imperceptibly that: “You can use Form 1040A if your income is only from wages, salaries, tips, interest, ordinary dividends, capital gain distributions, pensions, annuities, IRAs…” Hey!  Stay with me. Taxes aren’t as simple as April showers, so it’s only natural to find them confusing.  To some they’re like a treacherous forest, where one dollar or step too far can lead you over a cliff.  You’ve probably heard the notion: “If I pick up more hours it will push me into a higher tax bracket, and I’ll end up with less money than if I hadn’t taken overtime in the first place.”  To put it simply, that’s almost never true.  It’s important to remember that as taxable income (minus deductions and exemptions) pushes into higher brackets it is subject to a “graduated rate” that applies specifically to…to… You fell asleep, didn’t you? All right, forget all that.  We’re not learning about taxes.  No “alternative minimum” this, no “federal withholding” that.  It’s spring.  So let’s talk about strawberries. My family goes strawberry picking every year in my uncle’s humongous strawberry patch.  He loves strawberries.  Loves ‘em so much he thinks everyone should have some.  But he also wants everyone to see the “fruits of their labor”.  So instead of splitting ‘em all evenly, or letting everyone keep what they pick, he came up with a system of colored buckets and freezers. Yeah, he’s kind of crazy.  But here’s how it works: First, everyone gets a white bucket.  The white bucket is special.  Every strawberry you put into the white bucket you get… | Read More »