Dislike the IRS Pubs, examples, other IRS materials?

[Catherine]

29 minutes ago, Abby Normal said:

Drives me nuts.

Two points.  1.  It's not a far drive.    and 2.  They exist to do it.  I detest the pubs; try to find ANY simple piece of information.... blarg!

[JohnH]

What frequently drives me nuts about the pubs is their choice of examples to illustrate a point. It's as though a group sits around and tries to think up the most exotic or unusual set of circumstances to explain how the law applies in a given situation. Meanwhile, an example intended to clarify a high-probability set of circumstances is nowhere to be found.

[BLACK BART]

On ‎10‎/‎26‎/‎2018 at 4:51 AM, JohnH said:

What frequently drives me nuts about the pubs is their choice of examples to illustrate a point. It's as though a group sits around and tries to think up the most exotic or unusual set of circumstances to explain how the law applies in a given situation. Meanwhile, an example intended to clarify a high-probability set of circumstances is nowhere to be found.

Ain't it the truth?  I swear they stay up nights dreaming up the most unlikely of possible scenarios to illustrate anything.  They'll say something like "a part-time exchange student from Bora-Bora who designs software during the week and picks fruit on weekends is an HB-1 non-resident alien who also sweeps out the premises of a non-profit organization nights for amounts which vary according to the phases of the moon. The amount of his earnings subject to {whatever} is..."

[jklcpa]

Above posts were moved out of another topic to keep it from derailing further.  

 

 

[Catherine]

2 hours ago, BLACK BART said:

a part-time exchange student from Bora-Bora

YES!  And then you have a perfectly normal questions left completely unanswered.

[Edsel]

In addition to the ridiculously-defined circumstances presented by Black Bart, there are an abundance of cross-references to other regs, such as:

a part-time exchange student from Bora-Bora who designs software [described in reg 1.2637-4(i)(6)]during the week and picks fruit on weekends is an HB-1 non-resident alien [described in reg 1.934-18(viii)(12)(a)] who also sweeps out the premises of a non-profit organization [see also reg 1.436-7(xii)(2)(j)(iii)] nights for amounts which vary according to the phases of the moon. The amount of his earnings subject to {whatever} is...

They assume we can open 15 windows just to research the question, which may have been as simple as:

"Are unemployment benefits taxable?"

[JohnH]

I'm the culprit who committed the derailing offense on the original thread.   I apologize for having started down that rabbit trail since the question remained unanswered at the time.  I'll plead "off-season antics" in my defense. 

[Catherine]

@JohnH - don't apologize!  Over the course of time, I have learned TONS from rabbit trail discussions.  Instead, thanks to @jklcpa for splitting the thread.

[jklcpa]

4 hours ago, JohnH said:

I'm the culprit who committed the derailing offense on the original thread.   I apologize for having started down that rabbit trail since the question remained unanswered at the time.  I'll plead "off-season antics" in my defense. 

Catherine's post helped lead you astray.

[BLACK BART]

6 hours ago, JohnH said:

I'm the culprit who committed the derailing offense on the original thread.   I apologize for having started down that rabbit trail since the question remained unanswered at the time.  I'll plead "off-season antics" in my defense. 

The consensus appears to be that you are absolved, my son.  Go and sin no more.

[jklcpa]

You, Black Bart, should repent for choosing to ignore my cute cat-train derailment gif and continuing down a dark and dangerous path. 

[BLACK BART]

On ‎10‎/‎27‎/‎2018 at 7:37 PM, jklcpa said:

You, Black Bart, should repent for choosing to ignore my cute cat-train derailment gif and continuing down a dark and dangerous path. 

Well, I know ignorance of the law is no excuse and I sure am sorry about it but I don't have any idea what a "gif" is; much less how to derail one.  Is it anything like those PDF things (I can't find them anywhere either)?

[jklcpa]

GIF stands for graphics interchange format and appears as an animated image in a post.  I posted the one of the kitty derailing a model train hoping that posters wouldn't continue to derail the Land Percentage topic, but you apparently missed my point and posted off-topic there too, so I ended up moving all the derailing posts out of that topic and into this one.  Clearer now?

Sorry, I was trying to be cute/funny with the kitty gif and my post here above.  Guess that didn't work out too well.  

 

Edit - the gif was in Abby Normal's topic "Farmers, corporations and FUTA".  I was mistaken for a moment since it was the second topic this week that derailed that I had to move posts.  

I was trying to be more gentle than my usual cracking of the whip and yelling at people.  Sigh, sometimes nothing works and it's hard to find a happy medium or balance. It's coming up on Halloween so you all can just picture me in my usual witch costume.

Edited October 29, 2018 by jklcpa

[Abby Normal]

On 10/27/2018 at 5:55 PM, jklcpa said:

Catherine's post helped lead you astray.

Yeah, she's quite the rabble rouser.

Signed,
A Rabble Rouser

[Catherine]

27 minutes ago, Abby Normal said:

Yeah, she's quite the rabble rouser.

Mwah hah hah!