Taxes

Ugh...well, that seems to be done. Taxes are...challenging in our household. Not as bad as some people I know, because we're more or less impoverished and we don't have all sorts of wild and crazy investments. Couple of CDs, some really tame IRA stuff, nothing too complex.

But there's the part where the online tax software chokes on its coffee and says "what they hell is the deal with this W2 with zeroes in block 1 and a bunch of money in box 12 with some weird-ass code in front of it???"

I scratch my head and select the "income earned in a combat zone" box. At which point the software asks, "really?" And I say "uh-huh." And then I do Mr. Abby's W2. Probably six months were tax-free for him this year.

So finally the software looks up at me and says, "You people earned like $12 in taxable income this year."

Sorry...then you have to convince the software that you don't qualify for the people who come and deliver free frozen turkeys to your house. "Really, we do get money. It's just weird money."

The tax software looks at me suspiciously. "You sure you want to file this return?"

"Yeah."

You should have seen it almost grind to a total halt when we came to the part about home ownership, rental income and depreciation.

I live in absolute terror of getting audited. All I'll be able to do is shove a giant file folder at the auditor and say, "hey - I tried."

I've done my own taxes since I was a kid. The year we got married, we had H&R Block do it, but I prefer to keep track of the process. The military offers some assistance, and we've taken advantage of that before. But again - since I'm the one who'll get called on the carpet if it's dicked up, I like to know what's going on.

One year, I did state taxes by hand four times in order to pay a sufficient amount to the state we'd lived in half the year. See, Mr. Abby's active-duty status means many states aren't interested in taxing his income, but they do want their share of mine. And we render unto Caesar...

Well, finished for another year. If I suddenly drop of the radar, it means I really screwed something up.