Question

This error is referring to “sstax= grosspay*SS_TAX”. I don’t know what I’m doing wrong. ): After changing the global constants to integers I got another error that said ‘TypeError: can only concatenate tuple (not “float”) to tuple’ referring to “netpay=(grosspay)-(sstax+fedtax+statetax)”.
Here’s my code:

HOURS_IN_WEEK=40.0
PAY_RATE=16.78
SS_TAX=0.075
FED_INC_TAX=0.014
STATE_LOC_TAX=0.08
UNIONDUES=10.0
HEALTH_INS=35.0

def getInfo():
    hrs=float(input("How many hours did you work this week?: "))
    dependents=float(input("How many dependents do you have?: "))
    if hrs > HOURS_IN_WEEK and dependents >= 3.0:
        overtime=hrs-HOURS_IN_WEEK
        overpay=overtime *(PAY_RATE*1.5)
        pay=(HOURS_IN_WEEK*PAY_RATE)
        grosspay= overpay+pay
        grosspay= grosspay-HEALTH_INS
    else:
        pay = hrs * PAY_RATE
        grosspay = pay
        print grosspay
    return grosspay,hrs,dependents

def tax(grosspay):
    sstax= grosspay*SS_TAX
    fedtax= grosspay*FED_INC_TAX
    statetax=grosspay*STATE_LOC_TAX
    netpay=(grosspay)-(sstax+fedtax+statetax)

    print sstax
    print fedtax
    print statetax
    print grosspay
    print netpay

def main():
    grosspay=getInfo()
    tax(grosspay)

main()

Answer 1

There error says that you can’t multiply a sequence by anything that is not an integer.

You are returning a sequence in the getInfo() function:

return grosspay,hrs,dependents

This is equivalent to:

return [grosspay, hrs, dependents]

In Python, when you multiply a sequence by an integer, you duplicate the sequence:

>>> [1, 2, 3] * 3
[1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3]

Multiplying by a float makes little sense, which is why the error arises.

You can fix it by referencing one specific element of that list (you are after grosspay), so change this:

def main():
    grosspay=getInfo()
    tax(grosspay)

to this:

def main():
    grosspay, hrs, dependents = getInfo()
    tax(grosspay)

Now grosspay, hrs, and dependents are set and it should work fine.