Assignment task:
Meet Tabby
Without Betraying Your Age, Did You Ever Read the Dear Abby Column?
No matter your answer, we're all familiar with how advice columns work. In this course, one way you'll develop your own accounting expertise is by ghostwriting for the world-famous tax advice columnist Tabbitha Thomas.
You may think tax preparation is straightforward. Well, taxes tell a story of people's lives, and people's lives are never straightforward. So get ready to sort through some crazy drama to deliver good tax advice. To get started, here is an actual tax-related write-in from the official Dear Abby column
I have just learned that my sister's husband of 35 years (I'll call him George) hasn't filed their personal income taxes going back a number of years. This has caused a lot of stress and anxiety for my sister, who recently underwent breast cancer treatment. Apparently, he hasn't filed because of his inability to organize. (His family has denial issues.)
Their professional tax preparer has met with both of them and tried to work out a step-by-step program, but George consistently fails to meet the deadlines. I love my sister and want to be as supportive as possible, but I'm unsure what I can do. I have advised her to seek therapy. She has copies of business-related documents relating to the unfiled tax periods, but not enough information to file on her own.
On top of everything else, she has several relationship issues with her children that are causing her grief. What else can I do? -HELPLESS BIG BROTHER (Van Buren, 2015)
Reply to Helpless Big Brother in the guise of Dear Tabby. If this were your friend, what advice would you give him? In order to provide sound advice, you must include tax code(s) you examined to arrive at your conclusion. (You can usually find this information within the module or using the tax library from the Library link in Canvas.)
This is a "post-first" discussion.