Well, let’s start off with the good news — a nice check back from the Feds, an even nicer one back from the State. Hoody-frickin-hoo.
For the third year I used TurboTax, and I continue to be amazed by how easy it makes the whole process — except when the vagueries of tax law force it to direct you to an IRS Publication, in which case you’re screwed. Still, this is great stuff.
Once upon a time, I did all my taxes by hand. Then, when Margie and I were first married, we used a tax accountant, since (a) merging our finances was a bit complex, and (b) we needed to keep things separate enough to avoid any confusion in various, ah, spousal support matters. Once that was resolved, TurboTax and away!
TTax does a nice job of walking you through things. It asks good questions. And every year it adds various conveniences to the tax experience, not least of which is being able to electronically pull in information from your previous tax filing and remind you of stuff you may have forgotten. Well worth the bucks, IMO (which, as tax preparation costs, are deductable …).
I know that the ideal in tax prep is to come to 0$ owed in either direction. Certainly owing a bunch of money is a bummer (and has happened to me on a couple of occasions, though not for a decade or more). And I know that being owed a big chunk o’ change from Uncle Sam is a Bad Thing, since it represents an interest free loan of that money.
But y’know … there’s something really exciting about seeing that Uncle Sam is going to send you a big check (or the electronic direct deposit equivalent). Ditto for … uh, whoever the anthropomorphic representation of the State of Colorado is.
TTax keeps a running refund/owed figure at the top right corner of the screen. Thing is, it’s kind of meaningless when you’re initially entering data. But it’s a bit like a “score board” — you root for each deduction, boo each added taxable income item. You start out owing huge sums of money (as you identify income), and then slowly but surely hack it back as you note deductions.
Getting a big deduction for charitible contributions is not a moral reason to make such contributions, by the way. But it sure is icing on the cake.
One resolution I came to during this process: We need to seriously revamp our record-keeping. I’ve gotten extremely lax about keeping up our checkbooks, we have bags and boxes and cabinets full of stuff that need going through, etc. I wasn’t even as diligent as I have been in the past about putting aside all tax-related docs.
Sounds like a good weekend project.
But not this weekend.
Last year we tried another tax program besides Turbo Tax, and I didn’t like it at all. There are flaws in Turbo Tax, and this year the version was a little less helpful (I think it wanted you to access too much on-line, and needing 58 meg for an “undo” option should have been noted in the beginning) but it does the job… as the 40-some pieces of paper now printing proves.
I didn’t want to wait until the last minute. I even started asking the LintKing about the tax papers around the beginning of January… but with the ever-present “one thing and another” I’ll be at the post office tomorrow.