Death and Taxes - But, Mostly Taxes

I filled out our taxes this year, using Turbo Tax (more later on that experience).

For years, we've paid people to do our taxes, and, to be honest, it was worth it.

I'm married to a man who fiddles around just getting started with the whole process, then keeps postponing actually filing them, because he just knows there is a piece of paper around SOMEWHERE that will reduce his obligation to support government, if he only takes up just another day or two to find it (or weeks, or months).

For this reason, he has refused to sign off on our forms until we are racing to the mail drop-off point, at best. At worst, more than once, he has insisted on filing for an extension.

It was easier to pay for someone to tell him the same thing I was willing to tell him, for free.

Because, you know, despite accounting classes, business law classes, and bookkeeping experience, I don't know Sh*t about the topic. My telling him "that's not what that instruction means" and "you can't do that" mean nothing.

When a tax professional says the same damn thing, he may gripe, but he accepts it.

Did I mention that he is a die-hard Liberal?

Whatever.

This year, I decided to use Turbo Tax. And, it was remarkably easy to use, even though we had multiple 1009s and a small business. I finished in a day.

Well, except for a small glitch.

We owed 93 MILLION dollars. Hell, we don't even make 93 THOUSAND dollars.

So, something was wrong.

I got on tech support, and, after a short while, she asked to transfer me to a tax specialist. Which I agreed to.

The tax specialist was a sweetie. She asked for access to my screen, which I gave. She saw what I was seeing, which was that my alleged tax debt was HUGE.

After a long time, she asked if she could bring in a person who was more of an IT person - sure, I said.

Eventually, the problem was found. One of the papers I had scanned in created the problem of that enormous income, but couldn't be accessed to correct it. So, I asked, "Can I just delete that form, and re-enter manually?"

Once we agreed that would be the simplest action, I did, and, like magic, the program functioned properly.

We are going to be getting a nice fat refund, both the federal and the state. This is a program I will use again (not the least of which is I can fill out and submit the taxes without his explicit permission). He can always fiddle around later and submit a corrected version, should he want to waste the time.