Hooray-hooray!

The hallowed and estimable New York State Tax-Department, in its infinite wisdom, has deigned to finally advance into the new century by allowing its editable .PDFs to be saved.
Last year I saved an editable .PDF and all it saved was the tax-form. Data I had entered was vaporized. I had to do the whole thing over.
So last night (Saturday, April 5, 2008) I did the state’s IT-150 .PDF, printed, and hit the PDF-reader “save” button.
No indication of where it was saving to, so I did a “save-as” to my desktop.
“Do you wish to replace the already existing IT150.pdf?”
Wham-bam!
Now, the test.
Double-click the IT150.pdf icon, and see what happens.
VIOLA! All my data is there — my editing.
Who knows; maybe my 1040.pdf did the same thing, but maybe not.
That was last week, and various unknowns were in play:
-1) I was expecting my data to vaporize, so I probably didn’t save.
-2) The PDFs open with my Adobe PDF-reader 6.0; although it seems last year it was 6.0. I upgraded my PDF-reader some time ago from 5.0.
Supposedly the Tax-Form PDFs are a file-format 6.0 doesn’t recognize, but I bypass that because it doesn’t seem to matter.
-3) There also is the possibility the specific site I hit had the editable PDFs savable with data.
So it may be the sites; not the Tax-Department.
Linda suggested an editable PDF can be done two ways: -a) with savable data, and -b) just the editable form.
Now all we need is automatical math.
Seems doable, but we’re dealing with the gumint.
Still, doing it this way is better than $65 for TubbiTax®, and reconfiguring everything.

“Linda” is my wife of 40+ years. Her final job was as a computer programmer.

A loud famblee argument has surfaced about “TurboTax®” (“TubbiTax®”). I don’t use it, so am utterly stupid and reprehensible; whereas all my siblings do — making me inferior to them, and “mentally challenged.” I tried TurboTax® two years ago, and it was quadrupling the time required to do my taxes, and asking me questions the tax-mavens don’t even care about. TurboTax® would require completely reconfiguring my tax records, which would blow a whole weekend.