ten-forty copies

03:41 May 21, 2015 

Sorry that in China we don't usually see the tax forms so I have no idea about what it is. And by the way we can't use google here in China since several years before for some politic reasons.

08:58 May 20, 2015 

That still doesn't tell you that this is the 1040 the text is referring to. And it certainly doesn't tell you what a fundamental part of American cultural life they are and how obsessively they are kept and filed. Just knowing that it *might* be a tax form does not convey any impression of how completely the character is destroying his former life.

08:47 May 20, 2015 

I am not at all familiar with the US tax system. Still, if you take the string as it was posted and put it through a search engine, tax-related results for the US come up among the first five on the first page.

08:27 May 20, 2015 

As the original was spelled out ten-forty, it would require a bit of a leap to Google for 1040. Although it is immediately obvious to anybody that's ever dealt with the American tax system, I don't think it would be that easy for somebody that hasn't. I'm sure that there's an equivalent tax form that is just as well known in Shirley's country but that would be meaningless to us - especially if written in a non-standard way.

07:11 May 20, 2015 

Form 1040 is for filing a U.S. individual federal income tax return. Taxes for the previous year need to submitted to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) by April 15.

http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f1040.pdf