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Taxing Situation
Apr. 14th, 2007 03:15 pmWith a title like that, my entry should seem good in comparison, right?
I finished my taxes! Woo hoo!
Remember how I had almost finished them a couple of months ago? And I'm actually getting a refund this time? But see, there was this form I had to find and perhaps fill out.
The IRS has this habit I don't like where they say on the instructions for one form that if you are in a certain situation, you need to enter a number from another form. Then if you look up the instructions for the other form, they give you additional conditions that mean you don't need to fill out the form after all. But then they never actually say what to do about the first form. Enter a zero? Finally I decided that the answer was to leave that field blank (because later some instructions mention that the field might be zero or blank).
The form I thought I needed was totally inappropriate, but I found another worksheet I needed to fill out, and this led to my taxes coming to $100 less than my previous estimate. Which means I'm getting $300 back! This is the most I've gotten back in a long time because I had no self-employment and we got the extra deductions for the phone and sales taxes.
Unlike last year, everything now makes perfect sense, and I keep getting the same numbers repeatedly. The only weirdness is that when I sold four shares of Google, two of them were short-term and two were long-term so I had to split the proceeds in half to put part in each section and that led to having amounts with a half-penny. The IRS does not want to see half-pennies, so I rounded everything and everything on one side of the page matches up but on the back I had to decide whether to put the real total, like they tell you to, but which does not match the total of the numbers I wrote down. I decided to instead make the numbers look consistent. So I am lying on my return and claiming I earned an extra penny.
I still have to make a photocopy and mail it off by the deadline, but that part won't be taxing at all. I know just how to do it and I won't have trouble motivating myself either.
Journal entry of the day (actually four): Violent Acres' Sometimes Mediocrity and Lies Go Hand in Hand, Diary of a Teenage Runaway, The Ultimate Luxury, and Fifteen and Already a Wife These are an introduction and three-part story that's really hard to read although very well written because it's so sad. It reminds me that in real life, sometimes a happy ending isn't really an ending, and even though you have survived or escaped something, there might still be a part of you surviving and escaping that for the rest of your life. It reminds me that even though I think we have enough programs in my country that no one should ever have to go hungry, some people do not have the mental or emotional capacity to provide for their dependents. It reminds me that if you ever see any signs that something is not going right with someone, you're probably right (because I think most people try to hide problems). And it reminds me that sometimes your friends can save your life.
I finished my taxes! Woo hoo!
Remember how I had almost finished them a couple of months ago? And I'm actually getting a refund this time? But see, there was this form I had to find and perhaps fill out.
The IRS has this habit I don't like where they say on the instructions for one form that if you are in a certain situation, you need to enter a number from another form. Then if you look up the instructions for the other form, they give you additional conditions that mean you don't need to fill out the form after all. But then they never actually say what to do about the first form. Enter a zero? Finally I decided that the answer was to leave that field blank (because later some instructions mention that the field might be zero or blank).
The form I thought I needed was totally inappropriate, but I found another worksheet I needed to fill out, and this led to my taxes coming to $100 less than my previous estimate. Which means I'm getting $300 back! This is the most I've gotten back in a long time because I had no self-employment and we got the extra deductions for the phone and sales taxes.
Unlike last year, everything now makes perfect sense, and I keep getting the same numbers repeatedly. The only weirdness is that when I sold four shares of Google, two of them were short-term and two were long-term so I had to split the proceeds in half to put part in each section and that led to having amounts with a half-penny. The IRS does not want to see half-pennies, so I rounded everything and everything on one side of the page matches up but on the back I had to decide whether to put the real total, like they tell you to, but which does not match the total of the numbers I wrote down. I decided to instead make the numbers look consistent. So I am lying on my return and claiming I earned an extra penny.
I still have to make a photocopy and mail it off by the deadline, but that part won't be taxing at all. I know just how to do it and I won't have trouble motivating myself either.
Journal entry of the day (actually four): Violent Acres' Sometimes Mediocrity and Lies Go Hand in Hand, Diary of a Teenage Runaway, The Ultimate Luxury, and Fifteen and Already a Wife These are an introduction and three-part story that's really hard to read although very well written because it's so sad. It reminds me that in real life, sometimes a happy ending isn't really an ending, and even though you have survived or escaped something, there might still be a part of you surviving and escaping that for the rest of your life. It reminds me that even though I think we have enough programs in my country that no one should ever have to go hungry, some people do not have the mental or emotional capacity to provide for their dependents. It reminds me that if you ever see any signs that something is not going right with someone, you're probably right (because I think most people try to hide problems). And it reminds me that sometimes your friends can save your life.