Complete my tax forms? I'd rather swim with sharks

In a typical year, with April 15th looming just days from now, many Americans would be in panic mode as they scrambled to calculate their taxes and beat the annual filing deadline.

Me? I'm terrible with math and can barely balance a checkbook. I have a knack for stringing words together in a coherent sentence, but if you were to show me a mathematics formula or algebra equation, my eyes would glaze over and I might become nauseated and break into a cold sweat.

Fortunately, my wife took over the tax calculation duties several decades ago, and in recent years she has delegated that responsibility to a local accounting firm, saving both of us the angst of tax preparation.

Benjamin Franklin is credited with saying "nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes," but at least this year the IRS is delaying the inevitable by postponing Tax Day until May 17 because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

For many people, though, the postponement just means the agony of tax preparation is merely prolonged.

Here are a few tax tidbits based on a just released study by the personal finance website WalletHub:

• Seventy-nine percent of Americans don't know whether they'll owe income taxes on their stimulus checks (they won't).
• Americans spend 8 billion hours doing their taxes each year and the average person spends 12 hours, and $230, completing their Form 1040.
• Ninety percent of tax returns are expected to be filed electronically in 2021 and the average refund (Wait, what? Some people get refunds?) as of Feb. 26, is $3,021.
• The biggest worries people have about their tax filings are making a math mistake (30%), not having enough money to cover their tax bill (29%), identity theft (22%) and being audited (19%).
• Thirty-eight percent of Americans say they would move to a different country and 27% claim they would get an "IRS" tattoo in exchange for a tax-free future.
• If given the choice, half of all tax payers say they'd rather serve jury duty than do their taxes, 1 in 4 would prefer talking to their kids about sex, while more than 10% would prefer to swim with sharks, spend the night in jail and drink expired milk.

Successful open house

Old Town Cape's recent Downtown Vacant Property Open House was reportedly well received.

"We've spoken to several of the participating agents and property owners and most had 30 to 40 folks go through their spaces," OTC executive director Liz Haynes told me the other day. Of the 14 participating properties in the March 25 event, Liz said prospective buyers had "quality conversations" about at least three of them.

"That being said, there are no official contracts as of yet," she said, "but I am 99% sure that at least one of them is going to have a contract very soon."

Quick hits

• As a follow up to a recent story I wrote on the subject, Cape Girardeau Mayor Bob Fox told me last week he has had encouraging conversations recently with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the U.S. Coast Guard about possible development of docking facilities on the city's riverfront. The mayor said the city will likely move forward with a feasibility study in the near future.
• The renovation and repurposing of the former Cape Girardeau Police Department headquarters on South Sprigg Street is nearly complete. At last week's chamber of commerce First Friday Coffee, Community Partnership's Tony Buehrle told me May 10 has been targeted as "move-in day" for the organization. Aside from remnants of jail cells on the second floor, Tony said there's little to indicate the building's former purpose. "Forty South Sprigg is not like it used to be," he said.
• I heard the other day from Jane Stacy, alumni director emeritus at Southeast Missouri State University, that the Brody School of Medicine at East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina, had climbed significantly in this year's U.S. News and World Report's rankings of the nation's top medical schools. Why is that notable? Because her son, Dr. Mark Stacy (who grew up in Cape Girardeau), is the university's vice chancellor and dean of the medical school. Congratulations, Mark!

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