Flutterby™! : Taxes 2002-04-13 18:32:54+00

Taxes

2002-04-13 18:32:54+00 by Dan Lyke 7 comments

Sigh. Taxes appear to be over. Better and worse than I expected. TurboTax beats the heck out of that lame-ass system I used last year. Assorted unplanned expenses this month and last mean I'm procrastinating on running out and buying the D60 (which wouldn't be so bad, except that it implies a large CompactFlash card, and another flash, and the remote unit for the flashes and...).

okay, badly phrased, I'm lying to myself that I'm not going to, so that puts it in the "prevaricating" camp.

We here at the Internal Revenue Service are always on the prowl for people who don't pay their rightful share of the Government's operations. When you mentioned the keywords "taxes" and "prevaricating" in the same paragraph, you triggered our investigative web spider. According to administrative procedure D1249.16C, part 2, we will require you to supply your tax records for the last five years, as part of an investigative audit. Please call your local Internal Revenue Service office at (800) 225-5288 to arrange for an appointment. Thank you.

Oooh boy, an excuse to re-file! I learn more and more about taxes all the time, you poor suckers are screwed now.

I did my 1040A in 10 minutes. Then went back and did TurboTax via the web. Impressive, I learned a lot and have an idea of what I should be doing this year to avoid some taxes next time. Unfortunately, the web version came up with exactly what I did for 2001 and I owe $1564.00 to Uncle Sam. Ouch.

Roughly the same here... this is more or less normal though. Years of Schedule C and SE have convinced me that tax refunds are imaginary. At least I managed to pay all of this year's taxes off right away, though - first time in about three years I haven't had to set up a payment plan...

Taxes were a nightmare for me. I got a ridiculous amount back (comes from being in the 33% tax bracket for the first 3/4 of 2001 and then on unemployment the last 1/4). My problem was that my wonderful chapter 7 dot-com failed to pay the payroll company to issue W2s. I ended up spending a day doing manual labor for the Bankruptcy Trustee - loading the company's computer equipment onto a Ryder truck - to get the Trustee to pay the payroll company to send them out. I didn't get mine until the end of March!

If you are ever in a similar circumstance - no W2s - you are expected to file an estimated return. Easy to do if your company hadn't changed form an LLC to a s-corp half-way through the year and reset the figures on your paystub. In September the Social Security Administration releases its figures to the IRS about how much taxes was paid in by an employer on an employee's behalf (why the IRS doesn't know this in Jan is a mystery to me). You can file for an extension and wait until September or file a corrected return. But if you file estimated and guess too little (which I would have) you get hit with penalties. If you file estimated and guess too much you get hit hit penalties and interest.