Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2008 November 20

= November 20 =

American Expat Tax Refund upon Leaving the UK
I'm an American expat who has been living and working in the UK for several years. I shortly plan to leave the country and have heard that it is possible for non-UK citizens to get their income taxes refunded when they leave. However, I have not been able to find any useful information on the government tax website. Does anyone out there know if this is true? If so, where does one go to begin the refund process.

Thank you for any help,

--Wellington grey (talk) 07:11, 20 November 2008 (UTC)
 * It's complicated and you're not going to get a definitive answer to your particular circumstances from anyone on this desk. You really need to speak to an accountant.  Get a recommendation if possible, or look one up in the Yellow Pages (they must hold a recognised accountancy qualification such as ICAEW or ACCA).   The first thing you need to do is establish your residency status in the UK, which will determine your liability to tax.  And in fact there is plenty of information on the HMRC website.  Look at this page and this one for starters. --Richardrj talkemail 10:23, 20 November 2008 (UTC)


 * It's certainly possible. I managed something similar when I moved from the UK to Canada, and it hinged on the different definitions of being 'resident' for tax purposes in the two countries. Unfortunately this time of year is not the best to do this, as the UK will almost certainly consider you have been 'resident' for this year if you are moving now. However I may be wrong, and things may have changed, and the US is different from Canada, so you should absolutely consult a tax accountant with international experience. And check it at both ends, as you might be able to persuade the US that you are not resident for a tax year. DJ Clayworth (talk) 20:59, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Will my sister grow taller than me?
I'm 16 and my little sister is almost 13. I'm 5'6" and my sister is 5'3" and still growing. Our parents are average height, our mum is 5'4" and our dad is 5'10" and a half. I started puberty earlier than my sister and I was 5'3" by the time I was 11 and a half. The thing I noticed lately is that my sisters hips are level with mine, and I don't have short legs by any means. She has grown 3 inches in the past year, will she end up taller than I am? --124.254.77.148 (talk) 12:51, 20 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Height is determined by a variety of things so it's not a set thing but i've heard that a good guide is: Take the average height of your parents and for a boy add 6-12cm and for a girl minus 6-12cm. Of course any such measurement is very crude and probably not that reliable. By the by I was about 5'7/8 when i was 16 and ended up at 6'2. 194.221.133.226 (talk) 13:02, 20 November 2008 (UTC)


 * There's no real way to tell. Growth patterns are of course genetic, but like the difference between "weather" and "climate", there is a big difference between genetic trends in families and the specific manifestation of those trends in isolated cases.  At any point your sister may stop growing, or may grow right past you.  As an anecdotal example; in the 8th grade I was the tallest person in my class, however I stopped growing at that age, and all my classmates passed me.  My brother, on the other hand, was always shorter than I was at his age (i.e. he was shorter at 12 than I had been at 12, etc.) which continued until I went away to college.  He grew 6 inches in one year, thus passing my height while I was away.  Very disconcerting.  Since he was 16 he has been taller than I am, and he really didn't stop growing until he was 18 or 19.  Totally different growth patterns, though we both come from the same gene pool... --Jayron32. talk . contribs  13:17, 20 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Same thing with me. As a child, I was always the tallest or second-tallest kid in my class, towering over both boys and girls. I also appeared older for my age because of it. Everyone thought for sure I would end up super-tall and well, I'm lucky to be over five feet. --Crackthewhip775 (talk) 14:46, 20 November 2008 (UTC)
 * My experience was less dramatic - at school I was generally taller than most, but not exceptionally tall. I topped out at 6'2", which I think you'll agree is still taller than most but not exceptionally tall! Both me and my brother ended up exactly the same height but my parents were 5'10" and 5'6", so we gained a good four inches on my dad - perhaps due to better nutrition growing up. ~ mazca  t 18:00, 20 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Nutrition can certainly have a significant effect on height, it's true. --Tango (talk) 18:32, 20 November 2008 (UTC)
 * My friend's brother was shorter than almost all the kids in his class until he was 13, but now he's 5' 11" so... Tezkag72 (talk) 22:37, 20 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Indeed we can't be definitive about this. But there are some broad-brush averages that give some insight.  According to Growth_spurt, boys finish gaining height at age 18 and girls at 15.  So both you and your sister have two more years of growth. But girls go through this spurt in less time - so the rate they grow in that final spurt is faster so she stands a chance of catching you up.  Conclusion: Probably, you'll probably stay ahead of her - but probably it'll probably be closer than it is right now...probably. SteveBaker (talk) 00:51, 21 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Steve, I think the OP is a girl. Darkspots (talk) 01:42, 21 November 2008 (UTC)
 * They let girls in here? How are we gonna talk about — you know? —Tamfang (talk) 02:38, 21 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Stuff? Darkspots (talk) 02:42, 21 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Exactly. —Tamfang (talk) 21:07, 2 September 2023 (UTC)


 * I gained an inch or two after 18, if memory serves after thirty years. —Tamfang (talk) 02:59, 21 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Bah! Every guy says that. CambridgeBayWeather Have a gorilla 07:36, 21 November 2008 (UTC)


 * With jailbait present? Eeuw! —Tamfang (talk) 04:25, 22 November 2008 (UTC)


 * You may have misread the question. The OP was asking about height not your waist. (Resisting the other jokes in deference to the OP) Nil Einne (talk) 10:10, 21 November 2008 (UTC)


 * If I meant my waist, I wouldna said "inch". —Tamfang (talk) 20:45, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Identify the sex of someone by their words
A comment from Darkspots above was interesting. I read the OPs question and based on no evidence assumed it was a boy asking the question. Yet Darkspots thought the OP was a girl. On re-reading I think Darkspot was right, I think the word 'hips' is what swung it for me on the second-read. Anyhoo on with my question - is it possible to decipher someone's sex based purely on reading, say, a paragraph of their writing? I'm not thinking about ones where they explicitly refer to their gender, but more like the above question where no firm reference is made either way. 194.221.133.226 (talk) 09:13, 21 November 2008 (UTC)
 * That's what this site claims to do- it's worked very well on the samples I tested it with. 72.200.101.17 (talk) 09:41, 21 November 2008 (UTC)
 * If you're talking about the question I think you're talking about, I think the OP was female since the question makes more sense that way (everyone knows men are generally taller than women, so the OP would probably have mentioned that if they were male). I think from one paragraph of randomly chosen text, it's going to be very difficult. You can make an educated guess, but it's going to be very unreliable. With more text, it becomes easier, but it's still far from certain. There was a user on another site I used to frequent that I know was female (I was in regular email contact with her and knew her fairly well), but I would frequently forget that when reading what she wrote. There was something about her writing style that made it seem like she was male (this may have been partly intentional, she didn't like people on site knowing her gender [although it was far from a well kept secret], even to the extent of asking people to refer to her as "it" rather than "he" or "she"). I can't consciously say what it was about her writing, but there was definitely something. --Tango (talk) 10:36, 21 November 2008 (UTC)
 * She's a girl because she entered puberty earlier than her sister. Boys enter puberty later than girls.  Our article on puberty gives very wide ranges of ages, but generally girls begin puberty at 11-12 and boys at 13-14, in western countries. Darkspots (talk) 10:44, 21 November 2008 (UTC)


 * I would find it unusual for a boy to refer to his hips in any way at all. --Sean 13:39, 21 November 2008 (UTC)
 * OP here, I'm a girl which you probably would have guessed had I not forgotten to log in. Haha. But thank you all for your imput and sorry for confusing you. ;) --Candy-Panda (talk) 13:48, 21 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks for clarifying! --Tango (talk) 13:51, 21 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Really? Just because men have smaller hips doesn't mean they won't occasionally have need to talk about them. --Tango (talk) 13:51, 21 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Obviously not, but I don't think we'd use hips as a measuring device. For guys, I'd expect shoulders, eyes, and top of head heights to be used. Er, among other things. Women are (often) preoccupied with their hips because that's one of the measurements they need for buying clothes. A guy might complain about his waist getting too wide - or his gut - but he's largely indifferent to his hips. Matt Deres (talk) 14:21, 21 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Measuring around your hips, no, but the OP was talking about the height of her hips (as a measure of leg length). The standard measure of a man's leg length is the inside leg, but you wouldn't use that to compare two people (you would need a tape measure), so comparing hips is a likely way to do it (you could compare waist heights, but hips are easier to find on some people!). --Tango (talk) 18:51, 21 November 2008 (UTC)
 * I should have phrased that better. Men wouldn't think to measure things by their hips because it's not an anatomical landmark for them like it is for women, both in the literal sense that our hips don't flare out the same way and in the more figurative sense that women need to know their hip size for buying many kinds of clothes (for the same reason). The placement of hips is something men rarely have to keep in mind, so we wouldn't think to use it for anything else. It's kind of like how some men know what year and model of car every person they meet drives, while not being able to recall their names. Matt Deres (talk) 20:19, 21 November 2008 (UTC)
 * That site is fun – except for once, it says I'm/my text is male. haha hahaha Julia Rossi (talk) 21:29, 21 November 2008 (UTC)
 * It also wrongly pegged me as male. --Crackthewhip775 (talk) 22:43, 21 November 2008 (UTC)
 * And wrongly told me I was female (when we all know I'm a number). --121.127.209.126 (talk) 12:37, 27 November 2008 (UTC)