You are filing your tax return. By aggressively interpreting the tax law, you see a way you can take a deduction that would save you $10,000. Your accountant tells you that if you are audited, the IRS will definitely disallow the deduction, but that it would be considered a misinterpretation of the rules and not an attempt at fraud, so there would be no penalty or prosecution.

You receive a laudatory performance evaluation at work that gives you credit for several important things you were responsible for, and one important thing that you weren’t. You see why your supervisor thinks you did it, but you didn’t. The person who deserves credit has left the company, so this mistake will certainly go unnoticed, and will do no harm to someone else. It’s a fairly important thing to officially have credit for, tucked away there in the files.

In an antique store, you rummage through a box of 20 cheap old watches. They’re selling for $2 apiece, or $25 for the whole lot. You find one watch in there that is gold and that you know to be worth at least $300. It is clear that the store has no idea such a valuable item has been included with junk, and that if they did, they’d pull it from sale or ask a lot more money for it.

(Note: Generally, a merchant is not legally obligated to sell merchandise at an accidentally mislabeled, too-low price, once the mistake is noted.)

You are filing your tax return. By aggressively interpreting the tax law, you see a way you can take a deduction that would save you $10,000. Your accountant tells you that if you are audited, the IRS will definitely disallow the deduction, but that it would be considered a misinterpretation of the rules and not an attempt at fraud, so there would be no penalty or prosecution.

You receive a laudatory performance evaluation at work that gives you credit for several important things you were responsible for, and one important thing that you weren’t. You see why your supervisor thinks you did it, but you didn’t. The person who deserves credit has left the company, so this mistake will certainly go unnoticed, and will do no harm to someone else. It’s a fairly important thing to officially have credit for, tucked away there in the files.

In an antique store, you rummage through a box of 20 cheap old watches. They’re selling for $2 apiece, or $25 for the whole lot. You find one watch in there that is gold and that you know to be worth at least $300. It is clear that the store has no idea such a valuable item has been included with junk, and that if they did, they’d pull it from sale or ask a lot more money for it.

(Note: Generally, a merchant is not legally obligated to sell merchandise at an accidentally mislabeled, too-low price, once the mistake is noted.)

What we have here is one of William Carlos Williams’s most famous poems.  It is titled: “This is just to say.”

I have eaten

the plums

that were

in the icebox

and which

you were probably

saving

for breakfast

Forgive me

they were delicious

so sweet

and so cold.

This week’s poll is based upon last week’s poll, which proved interesting and controversial. That poll was based upon the contention that reasonably educated people should have a reasonable degree of sophistication, as measured by a reasonable level of knowledge on a reasonable array of reasonably eclectic sophisticated subjects. It was a highly reasonable poll. We are expanding it today, to better analyze the results. Actual answers will be given during the chat.

Join Gene Weingarten for his monthly live chat Tuesday, March 26, at Noon ET. Submit questions and opinions for Weingarten to respond to now.

Today’s polls are occasioned by a debate between me and my editor, Tom The Butcher, who revealed he had no idea what or who “Boris Godunov” is or was. I contended this demonstrated a lack of the degree of general knowledge and sophistication one would expect of a reasonably educated person; he contended I am an absurd elitist. So I decided to create a six question test, on this very subject. Here it is.

Join Gene for his next full chat on Tuesday, March 26 at Noon ET.