who could use a little help.

---

A friend of mine started this gofundme - he is not on DU but gave me permission to share it here.

https://gofund.me/86e32039

I know I haven't been here long and I don't want to ruffle any feathers, so just let me know if it's out of line and I will delete it.



---



EDIT:

The fundraiser was a success. Thanks to everyone who recced this thread, donated, or shared the fundraising link elsewhere.

Try harder

(sigh) the gig economy sucks so bad.

You're probably doing your taxes wrong, and you have my commiserations.

Ok, first off. You should be keeping track of your beginning and ending mileage for the year, on each vehicle you use.

Didn't do that last year? You're not alone. Add 14,000 to your total business miles (we'll get to that one in a minute) and call it good. If the IRS questions your return, that number is slightly higher than most estimates of the national average, and you'll at least have a rationale to give them; but be prepared for some grief if it's a full audit. If you didn't own the vehicle all year, pro-rate that number.

Next: Commuting miles. If you have a job in addition to your 'business', figure those out. If, like most people, you haven't been keeping a very good mileage log, you can estimate based on the number of days you worked and the distance to/from work.

However... If there are days that you only did the "gig" (or if the gig was your only work), you need to be aware that the distance from your home to your first business-related stop is a commute, as well as the distance from your last business stop to your home. (The corner gas station doesn't count, nice try.) Nobody else gets paid for their commute and you can't count it in business miles. If you just want to throw in an estimate and be done with it, I would go with 7,000... but again, if the IRS questions your return, and it's a full audit, you'll have some serious work to do trying to reconstruct your commuting miles based on something they'll accept. If you didn't own the vehicle all year, pro-rate the above number. So that's 7,000 commuting miles and 7,000 personal miles making up the 14,000 miles you add to business miles to get total miles.

Despite all this, there are probably business miles you AREN'T counting that you should. Uber and Lyft give you a breakdown at the end of the year which includes "online miles." This number does NOT include miles between a drop-off and the next pick-up; you should be using a mileage app or some other method to keep track of those miles.

Most people use the standard mileage rate. If you start with actual vehicle expenses in the first year you put the vehicle into service, you can't switch to SMR in later years. You can switch from SMR to actual expenses in later years, but you'll need to do some depreciation calculations.

Final note on vehicle expenses: The standard mileage rate doesn't take into account parking/tolls/fees (you can't add parking tickets or traffic tickets, again nice try); personal property tax on your vehicle; or car loan interest. You can add these in. You also probably spend extra on car washes/detailing; add this in. The reason for knowing ALL your mileage is that you only get to deduct the business percentage of personal property tax and the car loan. (Parking fees at your normal job are a non-deductible commute expense.)

Cell phone: You can and should be deducting this expense. Estimate what percentage is used for business (hours of work divided by total hours used) for phone charges and related equipment.

Here's a nice article (also an advertisement for a company I am not associated with and know nothing about) that covers a few other things:

https://blog.stridehealth.com/post/9-tax-deductions-you-have-to-be-taking-as-a-rideshare-driver

They are worried about threats to their own indoctrination.

Anything that might lead a person to independent thought, that's what worries them.

A little example:

I was raised Catholic. Went to Catholic grade school. I did a lot of reading (fiction) and did well in English classes.

Then in 8th grade, we moved (we were always moving - it sucked) and I ended up in public school for the first time since 1st grade.

Imagine my surprise in English class during an oral vocabulary quiz (or maybe it was spelling) when I, an A-student in English, had never heard of a word that everyone else in the classroom seemed familiar with:

"Dogma."

I had never seen this word in my life. When I learned its definition, "Religious indoctrination," I was furious. The people who had taught me for the past six years had purposely made sure that I didn't see this word in their classrooms. I felt foolish in front of my new classmates. All this time I had never questioned anything that had been shoveled into my brain - and my teachers had done their absolute best to ensure that I wouldn't question it. They didn't trust me to think for myself.

Shortly thereafter I returned to Catholic schools for the remainder of middle/high school - but the 'damage' was already done. By the time of my confirmation (where I suffered the indignity of lying in a darkened room with my classmates while a teacher tried some amateur hypnotism on us, which I recognized from a book I had read on the subject) I was firmly atheist. I have since softened my stance to agnostic, but that's another story; and agnosticism is equally repellent to most religious people.

So, this is what they fear. Because they know, if kids are given the opportunity to think for themselves, (or to be exposed to different things and ideas), they just might reject the load of crap being shoveled into their brains. Never mind that atheist or agnostic people can be just as moral, and often MORE moral (objectively defined as causing no harm to others), than religious people. Religious people want to be able to DEFINE morality, and ensure that everyone else goes by THEIR definition of morality.

Independent thought and a wide range of real-world experiences threatens that, so they attack anything which might interfere with their own indoctrination process as "grooming."

Their hypocrisy and self-righteousness makes me physically ill.

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100217561085

Um, it didn't become national news until AFTER they cancelled it.

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https://www.democraticunderground.com/100217561742

My fucking ass.

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https://www.democraticunderground.com/100217562124

MY FUCKING ASS!

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https://www.democraticunderground.com/100217561011

Um.... my fucking ass.

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(Here comes the really good part):


https://www.democraticunderground.com/111695013

Yeah, right... my fucking ass.

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https://www.democraticunderground.com/10143019494

Trump has only been out of office for two years, and the first 15 boxes were retrieved by National Archives in mid-January of last year.

So, six years?

My. Fucking. Ass.

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https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016342231

Sure they are...

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https://www.democraticunderground.com/100217562431

Myfuckingass, plus a bonus:



No fucking shit.

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https://www.democraticunderground.com/100217561023

Do I even have to say it?

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https://www.democraticunderground.com/100217561875

Republicans don't stand for anything, only against.. so, MFA.

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Which way are you goin'?
Which side will you be on?
Will you stand and watch while
All the seeds of hate are sown?
Will you stand with those who say,
"Let His will be done"?

One hand on the bible
One hand on the gun
One hand on the bible
One hand on the gun

Which way are you looking?
Is it hard to see?
Do you say what's wrong for him
Is not wrong for me?
You walk the streets, righteousness
But you refuse to understand

You say you love the baby
Then you crucify the man
You say you love the baby
Then you crucify the man

Everyday, things are changing,
Words once honored turned to lies
People wondering, can you blame them
It's too far to run, and too late to hide

Now you turn your back on
All the things that you used to preach
Now it's "Let him live in freedom,
If he lives like me"

Well your line has changed, confusion reigns,
What have you become?
Your olive branches turned to spears
When your flowers turned to guns
Your olive branches turned to spears
When your flowers turned to guns

Jim Croce, 1973

He knew.

Part of it was/is just me being the wrong age, I think. Part of it was/is that my ipad couldn't (can't) resolve those blue "link to tweet" lines into images, forcing me to decide whether to click or not. Part of it was/is just the feeling that it was/is all a bit of a show.

But, there were (are) people to whom it is an important part of their lives. A community. Although I don't really understand it myself, I do understand community and what it is to lose one.

A billionaire should not be allowed to destroy one just because he can (and for whatever other nefarious right-wing / libertarian reasons he might have.

So, despite my own ambivalence toward Twitter, I empathize with those who are soon to be grieving their loss.

Congressional hearings will be too little, too late - but they should happen anyway.

This really is less of a laughing matter the more I look at it and think about it.

Disclaimer: I know nothing about Merrick Garland except that he was middle-of-the-road enough that Obama thought the Repugs would not block his nomination. I am as impatient and full of doubts about the pace of the DOJ's investigation as anyone here, and still not sure we're ever gonna see any real justice when all is said and done.

Anyway...

I was watching this video: https://www.democraticunderground.com/1017739993

Glenn Kirschner was saying "Sometimes justice seems to take forever, and then it comes all at once."

It reminded me of the time I built a retaining wall at my sister's house. My brother-in-law was very impatient with the amount of time I was taking to make sure each and every one of the first retaining blocks was exactly the way I wanted it - just slightly off level, tilting in toward the area to be filled with dirt. To him, it looked like I was doing nothing (or close to nothing) for days.

The time finally came when I was ready to put the rest of the blocks up. He and another person who happened to be there helped me put the blocks in place; it took maybe an hour or two. He remarked on how fast it happened - where there had been just one layer of blocks, all of a sudden there was a wall.

No real point to this allegory except to say I hope that's what has been happening this whole time - the DOJ has been painstakingly building a good foundation so their case will not eventually crumble and fall, as the retaining wall eventually would if not for the time and meticulous care involved in setting the first layer down just right.

At the end of the video, Kirschner says, "I am so damn ready for the 'all at once' part."

Pretty sure we're all with him on that one.

I know a thing or two about addiction. One thing I know is, before you can recover, you have to hit bottom.

The problem is, everyone's bottom is different. What might be the bottom for one person might not be low enough for someone else.

America, as a whole, must hit bottom before it has a chance to recover from its gun addiction.

I thought Sandy Hook would do it. Sandy Hook didn't do it. Sandy Hook would have done it for any other country, but America is a much tougher case. Knowing that Sandy Hook wasn't our bottom, we can presume that Uvalde is also not our bottom.

I don't know what America's bottom will have to be. I don't want to see what America's bottom will be. Probably none of us do.

But apparently, we don't have the luxury of having that choice.