 Remember the three major tools we have available to us when learning income tax law being the tax formula, the tax forms, the tax software. Obviously these tools are interrelated, but I suggest thinking of them separately because each tool lends itself to a different perspective, a different angle on the tax law. Looking at tax law from different angles in general is good because looking at any problem from different angles allows us to understand the full problem better. And whenever we're solving a particular problem, choosing the correct angle to look at that problem from might make it a little bit easier, more efficient to solve that problem. So this time we're gonna be looking at the income tax formula, which is usually more of a simplified conceptual way to look at the tax code, which will be easier to visualize. So when you're going through tax problems or tax scenarios in your mind, usually we're gonna have a more simplified format in our mind or possibly in an Excel worksheet that we can use to get a gist of what would happen under different scenarios. Then we have the tax forms, which is gonna be a more extended type of formula. And that of course is gonna be linked to the tax software which helps us to do the data input which populates the tax forms. Here is an example form 1040. We're populating some information into this 1040 with LASERT tax software. You don't need tax software to follow along, but if you have access to tax software, it is a great tool to run scenarios with. You can also get access to the form 1040 and related forms and schedules at the IRS website at irs.gov, irs.gov. So if we just look at the 1040 itself, then we could populate the 1040 basically by hand, manually inputting the information into the form 1040. Obviously using tax software can help us to run different scenarios more easily by doing the data input screens and then that will populate the form 1040. So even tax professionals are not oftentimes going through the form 1040 and reading each line on the 1040, but instead they have a general idea of the structure, the overarching outline of the 1040 and they're putting the data input into the system, jumping then to the 1040 to see if the 1040 is doing what you would expect it to be doing. Now, of course, it is a good idea to go through the 1040 and look at the different areas within the 1040 and read through it and that's gonna be kind of a more complex income tax formula. And then to conceptualize that, obviously we're gonna have to simplify that in our mind so we can picture or visualize what we think is gonna be happening as we make changes. So the 1040 obviously upfront, up top, we've got just basically informational data, the taxpayer and the address. We'll go into this in more detail later. We've got the status information we'll go into in more detail and then in essence, you have an income statement. It's a very weird income statement. It's a tax income statement that's been influenced by tax law and other incentives and weird stuff, but it's basically an individual income statement. So you've got the income line up top and then you've got adjustments to income. You've got the standard deduction itemized deductions and the bottom of page one is basically net income or taxable income.