the rube goldberg tax refund, aka pleasure beach revisited

How does it take 32 steps (some involving entire forms of calculations), 4 supplemental forms, and a total of 6 pages of paper probably harvested from old growth forests in order to calculate that I made only $840 as a part-time resident of Connecticut, owe a grand total of $0 in taxes to the state, and want my measly $42 refund donated the Endangered Species, Natural Area Preserves, and Watchable Wildlife Fund?

The operations involved in turning $840 into $840 and $0 into $0 in a dozen steps were, at least, entertaining in retrospect.

The whole thing was clearly meant to be, however. Certain I had missed the deadline, I checked the Connecticut Department of Revenue Services website yesterday to discover that the filing deadline had been extended to today owing to "the storm that caused flooding and the power outages throughout the state." Hmph, news to me. Anyway, not wanting my withheld taxes to go to the government's slush fund (where it would probably, as Paul quipped, have been used for the abolishment of the CT Department of Environmental Protection), I frantically filled out the flurry of paperwork between juries. I knew immediately amongst the charities that I wanted to support this one because I remember vividly where that department is lacking: Visions of wandering through a foresaken wildlife refuge and beach town near New Haven will always haunt me. So beautiful, so eerie, so sad.