I like doing my own taxes. Now don’t get me wrong. I do not like paying taxes. Nor do I like wrestling with the almost infinite variety of forms the IRS has developed to force you to go and pay someone to do them for you. I simply want to keep somewhat informed of current tax law. I do that by doing my own taxes.
This year I learned something new, something I’ve never had to do before called “depreciation recapture,” which comes into play when you profit by selling an income generating asset that you depreciated in prior years. It is an interesting scheme invented by the IRS to get their hands a little deeper into your pockets. To explain it would bore you to tears.
Since I had never done this before, I had to spend a lot of time researching what forms I needed to use and then reading their instructions. Usually, I am able to grasp the concept of a tax form by reading the instructions and following the steps. That didn’t work this time. It seemed the steps I was following were leading me away from the end I expected. So, after wrestling with it for a while, I turned to that process everyone turns to these days when they want to learn something – I Googled it. It is truly amazing what is available online through Google and YouTube. I think you could find a video on how to do an appendectomy if you wanted.
With all this information available online, virtually free, it is surprising that there is anything a person cannot do on their own. After watching a few videos to catch the concept of depreciation recapture, and then trying the forms again, I successfully completed doing my taxes.
I recently came across a new term in relation to this online learning: “I Google know it.” Since we can look up anything online we may get the idea that we know more than we actually do. We may be able to talk like we know it, but that knowledge is shallow and not really ours. Had I simply watched the videos, I might have thought I knew about depreciation recapture, but I would have been wrong. It was applying what I had learned there, and working through the forms, that made the knowledge mine.
James saw a similar thing happening in the area of faith. We can read the Bible repeatedly, but unless we make personal sacrifice to help the poor and sick, or go and explain the gospel to someone lost, our faith is dead (see James 2:14-26). We only Google know it.