I have completed the first pass through the tax forms, and printed the appropriate page of the tax table to mark the range for my taxable income. It always looks cut-and-dried, but I don't think a year has passed when I didn't have to go back and do the math again (sometimes to my benefit, sometimes not.) The bread crumbs from past years usually help, unless I made a mistake that was caught later by the IRS and I didn't go in and mark my documents to show where the error happened.

There are some really asinine calculations to make, with results being compared to other results for the larger or smaller of those numbers. This is why the commercial companies stay in business, people are unable or unwilling to jump through these stupid hoops. Tax prep companies lobby Congress to keep taxes complicated. Poor people have to jump through these hoops, the super-rich ignore paying taxes altogether or have so many deductions it works out the same. And the IRS folks who keep the super rich honest are the ones being fired right now by Musk.

I finished my cuppa herbal tea, I'm headed to bed to read. Taxes resume tomorrow.