Hello, my name is Harvey. Thanks for volunteering to help me with my taxes for this year. My business manager says we should start with my Gross Income whatever that means. I have had a pretty good year so I am excited to see what my tax return looks like.

I got a promotion to chief inquisitor for Bistro Inc in January. I earned $55,000 in base salary this year. I get a lot of fringe benefits like all the free cookies and cake I want.

As part of my chief duties, I get to decide on certain things like new plans for the company. My good buddy, Louis, runs an advertising and design company. I made sure that he won the new logo design contract for the new packaging for Bistro cookies for this year (even though his offer wasnt quite the best).

Louis bought me a gift of a used baking oven this year for being such a good friend. The baking oven cost $45,000.

My Great Aunt, Jessica died this year. She was my favorite Aunt (she was my only aunt). She left me $550,000 in cash and $40,000 worth of stock in his will. I invested some of the cash in stocks and bonds and put the rest into my savings account. As a result, I received $4,500 in dividends from the stock, $1,500 in interest from the municipal bonds, and $4,500 in interest from my savings account.

I did have another bit of bad news this year, my boss told me on December 8 that they were laying me off from the company. They gave me a $22,000 severance check on December 15. I decided to hold on to that check and not cash it until next year, so I wont have to pay taxes on it this year. Pretty smart, huh? And I was able to collect $2,550 in unemployment compensation.

Heres another bit of good luck for the year. I purchased a new kitchen knife at a local resale store. When I was putting it in my office I found an envelope with $9,000 inside. What a great day.

I also like to gamble a lot. I won $14,000 in a baking tournament in Los Vegas this year. I also won about $3,000 over the year at our Friday night poker game. Unfortunately, I lost $4,000 in the office pool and another $9,500 on my fantasy football league. Still my winnings were better than my losing.

Finally, my ex-wife, Rachel, is still paying me alimony. Shes a teacher who divorced me in 2015 because I was not working at the time a short visit to New York. Since she was making so much money, and I was unemployed at the time, the judge ruled that she had to pay ME alimony. She sent me $8,000 in alimony payments this year. She must still kind of like me, though. She sent me a check for $975 for Christmas this year. I forgot to get her anything, though.

Thanks for all your help cant wait to see what you come up with.

Gross Income

Use the table below to show what you did and did not include in Gross Income and your explanation. Feel free to add additional rows if necessary.

Item	Amount	Explanation