What are the odds?

[powerage]

This is my 5th season and I've done around 800 returns or so and this has never happened to me before.

Yesterday I had a client whose birthday is 08/07, and a client today whose son had the same birthday. My birthday is 08/07. I have some lottery numbers now.

[RitaB]

Cool!

I once had a client where the withheld tax was exactly right. No refund, no amount due. Checked it about five times before I called him.

[ChEAr$]

I once had a client where the withheld tax was exactly right. No refund, no amount due. Checked it about five times before I called him.

I used to see that often on Georgia returns. But the "oddest" refund I ever saw
was a federal refund of 1040. $ that is.

[Burke]

I once had a client where the withheld tax was exactly right. No refund, no amount due. Checked it about five times before I called him.

I have done taxes for 34 years. It's only happened to me twice.

[Black Bart]

Talking about numbers,

you ever notice when you're doing a C/E/F and you're finishing up, how often you'll get a "suspicious"-looking number like $5,000 even net profit or maybe exactly $20,000 net sales after you plug-in cost of sales and inventory?

Sometimes I'll "massage" it a few bucks to get rid of that and danged if it doesn't give me a round number somewhere else that I don't want to bring attention to and don't want IRS to think I pulled the numbers out of the air.

[Lion]

Birthdays

My dad's birthday was July 19. When I married Steve, he has a daughter with a birthday of July 19. Then, my son started dating and is still with his girlfriend whose birthday is July 19. Those are our only two children. I think they all belong in my family!

My son's girlfriend is Schwartz; Steve's daughter's boyfriend is Swartz.

[gboykin]

Client yesterday got back EXACTLY what his refunds were from Federal and NC last year. All different income and deduction numbers, but same refunds.

[luke]

birthday

In 22 years have had 2 tax clients with same birthday (09-09) as mine (one was even same year) - Both of them were a little "flaky" - Mmmmm

[Lion]

09-08

I'm 09-08 and not a bit flaky!

[JohnH]

Actually, if you get a random group of 30 people together, there's about a a 70% chance that two of them will have the same birthday. Increase the number of people to 50 and the probability increases to 97%.

That isn't the same as starting with one person (yourself) and calculating the odds of another person having the same birthday, but with a large client population you'd expect quite a bit of duplication.