BOCCOLINI: Add It Up

I’m going to say it flat-out: I’m not really that good at math. After Algebra II, I was done for. I felt like Wilson in “Castaway” after Tom Hanks doesn’t have enough rope to reach out and snatch him from the wild ocean. And while I opted to defer my required math class until next semester, addition, subtraction and multiplication (not you, division) have snuck their way back into my life. I shouldn’t have given out my cell phone number that night. Darn.

Ineffective hiding places aside, math has found me, and it wasn’t pretty. I found myself this afternoon doing what I pretty much always do: researching for a paper. This particular piece explores the exhilarating world of public subsidies for professional sports stadiums and their effect on urban youth sports programs. I know, I know: you need a minute to bask in the awesome. Or to figure out what I just said. Either way, take your time.

Now that you’re back, let me explain. After finding the average per capita income of a population (in this case, a major city), we have to itemize. I wish itemizing meant going out and buying an item to reward ourselves for all the hard work we’re about to do, but alas, such is not the case. Itemizing is taking out work-related expenses like lunches with a client, parking or public transportation. Then we take out the standard deduction rate, which is calculated based on a myriad of factors.

This was all fine. Simple multiplication and addition gave me the population’s taxable income. Where I got lost was on the Pennsylvania Department of Revenue’s website. I had to calculate personal income tax, so I roamed the website until I found this: “Pennsylvania personal income tax is levied at the rate of 3.07 percent against taxable income of resident and nonresident individuals, estates, trusts, partnerships, corporations, business trusts and limited liability companies not federally taxed as corporations.”

Regis, I’d like to phone a friend. Luckily, my dad was able to explain that I just had to take 3.07 percent off the amount remaining after all the other deductions. Sounds simple, but at this point my brain was turning to goo from trying to make sense of it all.

You see, math, like anything, was fun when I was good at it. One- or two-variable equations made me feel smart because they were easy. Muttering to myself as I took the pencil to the paper in the hopes of finding “x” made me seem like a crazed genius, but if you looked over my shoulder you would’ve noticed that I was just subtracting two dollar amounts.

And while the fact that I calculated the average income after taxes for three cities may seem like a task suited for only the mathiest of math-doers, I wouldn’t ask me to do your taxes.  I’m not Good Will Hunting or Jim Sturgess from “21,” you know. Now can someone help me change my phone number? Multiplication is still here and he’s slightly unnerving.

Liz Boccolini is a freshman in the College of Communication and a weekly columnist for The Daily Free Press. She can be reached at lizboc@bu.edu.