DG got busy this weekend doing his income taxes and calculating what percentage tax he pays. But he ran into a problem on the calculator.
No matter what he did, the calculator threw an error. DG was not happy.
“What’s wrong with this stupid calculator?” he shouted.
“DG”, I said, “It’s not the calculator. You see, since you are a cartoon character, you have no income. So, when you divide your taxes by your income you get a “divide by zero” error in the calculator.”
“Listen up. You have no income, so you put a zero in the divisor when you calculated your tax rate. Dividing by zero is an invalid operation, so the calculator gives you an error. In order to calculate your tax percentage, you need to have at least some income. Just a second. I think I can fix this. ”
So, I made him a W2 form that shows an income of one cent.
Since he won’t owe any taxes on an income of one cent, the calculations work out now.
Zero divided by 0.01 give…..
Ta Daaaa! Your tax rate is zero.
Sometimes you have to play along.