Tax Headaches

What a good feeling it is to finally have my taxes done. After American Idol last night, I pulled out the ole' tax forms. Let's see, we had W-2s, 1098s, 1098-INTs, 1040s (with schedule "A"), and WD-40s. Ok, maybe not the last one. But..I DID have my most favorite tax website, which made doing my taxes less of a headache this year: TaxAct.com. I did my federal taxes on there last year and it was a breeze. I filed all electronically and my refund came within about 10 days and was directly deposited into my checking account. It doesn't get any easier than that.

This year's taxes were a bit harder, since Olivia and I bought a house and aren't married. After wading through page after page of legal mumbo-jumbo on the IRS.gov site, we decided that one of us would claim the house and the other would not. We also decided that neither of us could could legally claim "Head of Household" because the other person(s) living with you must be a relative: Sister, Step-brother, Uncle, etc. Since Olivia is my 3rd cousin (twice removed), we both filed as "Single" and I claimed the house. I would say it definitely helped my return.

You know, the cool thing about TaxAct.com is that you don't have to be a tax genius to figure it out. As you go through the process, you are asked questions. During the "About you" section of the process, I came upon a really funny question. Here's what it looked like:

Jeffrey is blind.

The funny part is, they asked me this question last year and I remember thinking this was a pretty entertaining then. It's just funny seeing it written out like that.

Our snow is quickly melting away, thank goodness. I was getting tired of helping people get un-stuck because they couldn't drive. I think I set a new personal record by helping 3 different people get their cars un-stuck in this latest snow storm. Ya know, some people just shouldn't be allowed to drive in the snow. Period.

Posted by Jeff at February 20, 2003 09:32 AM