June 27, 2012
This is the tax season that may never end.
It was probably between lines 35 and 37, estimating our 2011 taxes. I was writing in another set of numbers. And before the reason fully settled in, I felt the full force of idiocy wave through my system.
My first mistake on my taxes and a whole filing year had passed.
I’d forgotten to claim my brother as a dependent for tax year 2010.
I could blame it on any number of things: Sheer carelessness, rushing through the taxes, not double checking my work, filing in a new home, or just plain being so mad at him he was financially dead to me.
Fact remained, I was an idiot.
And I had to meet Mssrs. 540x and 1040x.
For the record: If you’re not a neurotic fool, *ahem* you will read the instructions first like a normal human and find that it’s not actually all the difficult to fill out a correction. Twice. Once for state and once for federal. Because let’s face it, when you screw up claiming a dependent, you will have screwed it up on both.
In total, if I hadn’t gone back and spent too much time doing it wrong the first pass for three hours fussing over unnecessarily recreating the previous tax form and then taking a second, sane, pass at 30 minutes per form getting it right, I would have forever lost more than $3000.
The I.R.S. has already paid me back with a gentle nudge of a correction because I made a math error but they didn’t hold that against me and cut a check anyway.
The state of California still hasn’t paid ten weeks later, giving me a financial noogie, to rub it in that much more.
Bonus Round
To extend the pain cycle, I couldn’t even finish up our 2011 taxes because: We. Are. Still. Waiting. On. A. Schedule. K.
Hello, Filing for an Extension. For the first time in thirteen years of employed life.
No, I’m not bitter that I’m still not done with filing taxes in July, when I’ve always been done with taxes/FAFSA by February 2nd, why do you ask?
I’ve booked time in August to file the dratted thing. [Long dramatic sigh.]
Welcome to married life! Whereupon you hitch your star to the other guy and you apparently can’t do everything on your own time anymore. Apparently. *chagrined grin* No, obviously I’m not perfect. I just have my thing about getting taxes done by a certain time and we are oh-so-very-late.
October 9, 2011
After some grumbles, I set myself to the task of filing PiC’s taxes yesterday.
I was annoyed at first because, well, it’s October. I’m a February Filer. Different philosophies. He had to wait for a Schedule to come in that didn’t arrive until September, so he had a reason but it still gets under my skin to be doing last year’s taxes at the point when I’m already thinking about next year’s.
Setting up the account was nearly impossible – I couldn’t get the page to accept a password. Fifteen minutes of error messages.
Finally, I got into TurboTax’s guts and we were off to the races.
Income
I had a whole pile of forms and shuffling through them, nothing was terribly complicated.
I did hate on Wells Fargo for a minute for sneakily combining a 1099-Div and a 1099-INT onto the same page, though – I like order and since I was inputting the forms by type, that interrupted my flow. And they had this whole “see Details” thing going on for a few boxes. You’d obediently flip to the Details section and it’d show you … nothing. THANKS.
(In my New Order, I’m banishing Wells Fargo. Especially since they were such a waste of time.)
Deductions
This was fun. {evil laughter} The know-it-all came out. I had a couple items in the pile from PiC, and then made out my laundry list of things I knew he should have deductions for that he’d missed.
His proof of charitable deductions were missing, for one thing. Property tax, mortgage interest totals, car registration.
And then upon review, I was mortally certain, without actually having seen his property tax bills during the year, the total he gave me was still too low and sent him back again for another look. Right-o, there was a supplemental tax bill he’d been dunned for, more than $1000, and had forgotten about. That put nearly $500 back in his refund.
Analysis and Completion
Clearly, he wasn’t taking the standard federal deduction.
I think his CPA was shortsighted for telling him to send in a chunk of additional tax money this year for state taxes, assuming he was going to owe just as much in 2010 as he owed in 2009. Did the CPA not consider that he was going to be paying a full year’s home interest and property taxes? That seriously affects your AGI! Think this through, my good fellow. When your state refund is twice and more what you paid in quarterly taxes … *smh* There was no real good reason to do that, is what I’m saying. He wasn’t in danger of an underpayment penalty at the end of 2009, and he wasn’t going to owe at the end of 2010 as much as he did the prior year.
Filing
I’d snagged him a fantastic prepaid code for both state and federal, saving him $140 on both filings. Did him one better than my own, I even had to pay for my state filing!
One Day, One File
It didn’t take the whole day, but we finished his taxes on the Saturday I started them. I had him review it with me at the end to make sure he understood everything that I did and all the notes I had. I’d initially complained that doing his taxes weren’t any fun but halfway through I was a liar because I was having fun again.
I could actually enjoy doing this for other people, now that I’ve gotten past my initial weirdness of not having the fully organized, spreadsheeted, noted, checklisted pile of forms to work from. Maybe I’m not quite ready for the shoebox of receipts thing but, you know, I could deal with the less organized anyway.
March 23, 2011
My part of Tax Season came and went with surprisingly little fanfare, after a fashion.
I used a free code for TurboTax to file my federal tax return online after finding out that there were several complications with my family’s information that has effectively left me out in the cold. I was hugely frustrated, enough so that I couldn’t even really talk about it.
It will cost a substantial refund but there is nothing to be done about it and dwelling on the lost saving or buying power does no one any good.
March 9th and 12th welcomed early, modest, refunds from both federal and state, and that whopping $700 will go toward the wedding and insurance payments, by halves.
Nothing like the lovely mistake Stacking Pennies made but survivable.
January 30, 2011
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| WORDLE! |
With every 1099 that pops up on my screen, with each box I check off on my list in the “For Tax Filing” folder, my excitement grows. I’m going to get my taxes out of the way soon!
Stacking Pennies and Well-Heeled shared my excitement on Twitter but mostly (or only) because they both knew they were getting money back; I’m a fool who’s just excited to get them done solely to have them done. It’s the excitement of crossing the finish line, and chucking the folder, never mind the penalties potentially associated with filing when you aren’t expecting a refund.
Adding to the weird tingly eagerness is the knowledge that this may be the last year I have a relatively simple tax situation. It just dawned on me, as I was doing the 1099-dance a couple weeks ago, that PiC’s taxes are always still lingering incredibly, disconcertingly late in the year. When I commented on this, he mentioned something about “complicated” and “extensions” and I’m sure there were other words in between but the buzzing of denial quickly set up shop in my brain. Not quickly enough to prevent me from realizing – *sob* – we’re going to have to file together, late, once we get married. (Technically, that should make me savor this last filing, one supposes.)
Now … I’m not saying, that I’m going to put off the wedding as long as I can so as to enjoy as many years filing head of household as possible, I’m just saying I’m going to miss nearly being able to do my own taxes.
To be honest, previous years weren’t entirely my own work. I cheated because I only handled the dry run and double (triple) checking the forms after they came back from the family CPA, but there was still satisfaction in knowing whereabouts the numbers should fall.
After marriage, let’s just say these eyes can’t handle that much crossing and still be good for anything.
Is anyone else happy to deal with their taxes this year or any year? Does the bliss of having them out of the way make it worth the trouble?
December 28, 2009
It’s the end of December, which means tax preparation time! Well, prepping for tax prep, anyway. I like to start pulling together my records early in December to make sure things are all set for this tax year.
This is the first year since 2004 that I can claim Education Credits because I took a couple classes this last quarter. I should also be able to claim the money paid towards next quarter’s tuition since that’ll be paid before December 31st.
The usual two choices are the Hope and Lifetime Learning Credits. This and next year, however, a new player is in town: The American opportunity tax credit (AOC), a modification of the Hope Credit.
Here’s a quick comparison of the credits:
AOC, a modification of the Hope credit:
— The maximum amount of the AOC is $2,500 per student. The credit is phased out (gradually reduced) if your modified adjusted gross income (AGI) is between $80,000 and $90,000 ($160,000 and $180,000 if you file a joint return). Exception. For 2009, if you claim a Hope credit for a student who attended a school in a Midwestern disaster area, you can choose to figure the amount of the credit using the previous rules. However, you must use the previous rules in figuring the credit for all students for which you claim the credit.
— The credit can be claimed for the first four years of post-secondary education. Previously the credit could be claimed for only the first two years of post-secondary education.
— Generally, 40% of the AOC is now a refundable credit for most taxpayers, which means that you can receive up to $1,000 even if you owe no taxes.
— The term “qualified tuition and related expenses” has been expanded to include expenditures for “course materials.” For this purpose, the term “course materials” means books, supplies, and equipment needed for a course of study whether or not the materials must be purchased from the educational institution as a condition of enrollment or attendance.
After all is said and done, the Lifetime Learning Credit remains my best friend. This gives a 20% of the first $10,000 of qualified education expenses you paid. Quick calculations say that I’m looking at a credit between $400 and $500. Of course, these are just rough numbers right now — there’s still a lot of income crunching to be done before I’m ready to file my tax returns for 2009.
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Carnavale!
The last Carnival of Personal Finance for 2009 is up at Gather Little By Little. Mike included my update on investing.
February 17, 2009
1. Positively antsy to get my/family taxes completed. Yes, this is my confession that I did not offficially file my taxes myself, again, this year. Gah. I’ll feel guilty about it later. I did my usual dry-run, and I think I’ve finally gotten things straight. If they match the accountant’s, I’m filing my own next year. *goal set!*
2. Got two ING Direct referral bonuses in the last week, courtesy of Flexo‘s awesome link-sharing policy. Thanks Flexo! [If anyone wants one directly from me, I’d be happy to send you one!]
3. Still waiting to see my check for the truck insurance refund. How sad, just $115. Stinks that they refunded it to a card I canceled, so I have to wait for that card to send me the check.
4. Expect to be doing the same run-around with the insurance refund on the sedan.
5. Food makes everything better: we’re going to potluck next week. This should be good.
September 5, 2008
It’s not anything so nuts as actually running the numbers, precisely. Sort of. I just decided that in the spirit of getting ready to pick up and fly where the winds may take me (am I mixing my metaphors?), it’s more than time for me to get more of my financial paperwork online.
Also, my receipts were all hanging out in a single envelope, and that’s unsightly. While I’m not ready to go all out like FB’s scan-a-thon, oh but I would LOVE to, I did want to get started.
So, I grabbed all my receipts, and sat up organizing them into several categories for the Schedule C portion of my income: Gasoline, Business Clothing, Business Gifts, Cell Phone, Dry Cleaning, Travel and Office Supplies. Then, I opened up a new spreadsheet and a kajillion new sheets on Google Docs. The dates, amounts and any applicable notes for each receipt were recorded in chronological order. It only took about two hours to sort, create, and enter the data.
Now that all of the amounts are in a single place, I can easily PDF the whole thing, and take them to my friend’s house to hang out with his dad and learn how to really do taxes next year.
My next step? Getting a good deal on a scanner and scanning all of the tons of files that I’ve got in my room. Offhand, I have files for:
~ auto insurance, maintenance and registration records for three cars
~ Rollover IRA statements
~ FSA records
~ old BT credit card records
~ airline and hotel rewards membership numbers and information
~ tons of credit card statements from the past few years
~ household bills/statements
~ cell phone records
~ payroll records
~ past three or four years’ worth of tax returns
I could recycle some serious paper!
*Now I’m oogling multipage scanners. I don’t need that…. I need to save money more than I do time. Then again, hmmm……*
