The Taxing Info Superhighway

[David Farber <farber () central cis upenn edu>]

To: farber () central cis upenn edu
From: lbreit () eff org (Lisa Breit)
Subject: The Taxing Info Superhighway


Dave, I thought you might find this tale of the internet for everyman
interesting.


Lisa B.




  ------- Start of forwarded message -------
   From: MCRN!NATHANB () micronic netcom com (NATHAN BROOKWOOD)
  To: davet ( Dave Teichholtz  )
  Subject: Re: Technology is great
  Date: 24-Mar-94 11:17:08


I needed some tax forms to report my nanny's income for 1993.  (Johnnie
still has aspirations to high governmental office.) Just as I was getting
ready to drive to the local IRS office, I learned that a library of tax
forms, in adobe acrobat format, now resided on compuserve.  And, as a
special deal, they even had a down-loadable version of the acrobat reader,
needed to recreate these forms in all their IRS glory on my local
printer.(This costs $25 in the stores.) So, rather than drive 5 miles to
get the forms on the traditional highway, I decided to take advantage of
the emerging information superhighway.


I logged into Compuserve, found the forms, and began to download them.
Two forms, two instruction sheets, four pages at ~ 1/2 hour per form.  No
sweat.


Then I went to download adobe acrobat.  I discovered that only the windows
version was available, but the system promised that the macintosh version
would be on-line in a few days.  Compuserve customer service hadn't been
aware that the press release said it was already there.


I logged in a few days latter and acrobat for macintosh was there.
Distributed as four 800 KB uncompressed floppy images, approximately one
hour (each) to download.


Four hours later, I tried to install acrobat from floppy images.
Installer crashes consistently.  Try to install from images, going around
installer.  Doesn't work.  Dump images to floppies and try to install.
Success.


Finally, load acrobat (which requires, of course, ATM (which is one one of
the floppy images)) and call up the first form.  It comes to life on the
screen, and looks beautiful.  Of course, there's no way to fill it out on
screen, and then print a completed copy.  First you have to print it out,
and then fill it out via pen, in the traditional manner.  Up to this point
I have invested about four hours of my time and six hours of billable
compuserve time, in order to avoid the 20 minute trip to local IRS office.
But I figure I've traversed the learning curve into acrobat, and the
incremental cost per form will be minimal, so it's not that bad.


So I start printing the blank form.  My laser printer struggles for twenty
minutes, and finally gives up.  "Delete fonts or add memory" the error
message says.  I spend about an hour trying various tactics to get get
something out, and even consult the manual, which was on another of those
floppy images, for assistance.  (I could print out the manual.)


Then I consider whether my stylewriter, with its software driver not
constrained by memory, might work.  Unfortunately, I packed it up and put
it in the garage last year after I upgraded to the new laser printer.  So I
pull it down from its dusty shelf, reassemble it, reinstall its drivers,
and once again click on print.  Amazingly, it spins into action and my
forns start flowing off the information superhighway.


Unfortunately, I missed the filing deadline by 8 days, and the IRS just
assessed me a $20 penalty.  I'm debating whether I should file an appeal.
The form to do this is on compuserve.


Elapsed time (including on-ramps, off-ramps and detours): ~ 8 days
Compuserve time: 6 hours (@ $12.95 hour; rate went down following week) My
time: 10 hours -- but I learned a lot, and I can do the next form in just
the 30 minutes it takes to download, which is only 10 minutes longer than
it takes to drive to and from the IRS office.




  ------- End of forwarded message -------