Fucking Taxes

[multipurposegoddess]

Let me preface this by saying that my taxes have always been simple - my income has always been wages, a tiny bit of interest, occasional stock options exercising; I've never owned a home or had a dependent or ran a business or had investments. I've always done my own taxes and they were easy to understand.

Today I spent 5 hours doing my taxes and I have no idea what's going on with them. First I tried H&R Block's on-line TaxCut thing, which told me I should get around $3K back from the Feds, $500 from CA and $650 from LA. Thinking that that couldn't possibly be right, I put all the same information into TurboTax (who has, sometime in the last two months, decided that they can import last year's information into this year's return, so that's nice) which tells me i should get $100 back from the Feds, $1000 from CA and $250 from LA. I spent some time trying to track down what the differences could possibly be resulting from and I can't find a thing. It makes no sense at all.

So, I'm thinking that I should either take all my forms down to a professional and let him or her take care of it, but then I have to trust this STRANGER to take care of my finances and I am so not good at that. So the alternative is to go spend the day at the library and try to do the whole thing by hand, so at least I'll know where the parts I don't understand go on te various schedules and returns. It seems very backwards, but it's how I'm leaning at the moment.

It's such a nibbled by ducks thing. Here are the changes that are conspiring to drive me mad:

• Henry changed jobs last year, therefore 2 W-2s
• Henry had taxes withheld in La and it is unclear whether they get to keep any of that
• I got paid as a contractor which seems to mean that I now own a business
• Henry worked from home for half the year
• My grandfather's trust was dissolved and I have to figure out how to account for my share of the losses and interest, and possibly the actual inheritance, which sure seems like income in that is money I didn't have before and now do, but didn't get applied in either attempt, so maybe not. In any case, the K-1 is freaking confusing and the trust's accountant as much as told me that I wouldn't be able to figure it out on the first try.

None of this is huge or outside the scope of the on-line tax software apps. I don't think. Maybe that's the problem. I don't know.

Oh, well, I feel better for bitching about it. That and eating, which I pretty much forgot to do today until just now...whoops.

Comments

[pix-kristin.livejournal.com]

My two cents? Go to a tax advisor. Someone who has a good word-of-mouth reputation. He or she will help you deal with the insanity that is our tax code.

Signed,

Has been going to an accountant since she got her first job and has never regretted spending the money

[ste-noni.livejournal.com]

I've done H&R Block twice. Both times I was very happy with the result although I had to pay them several hundred dollars (like 500-700, I think). Still, it was stuff I couldn't so myself so I htought it was money, not well spent, but necessarily spent.

[thezzyzx.livejournal.com]

If you own a business, remember that you get to write off any expenses that are related to that. The year Jambands.com gave me a 1099 was wonderful for that reason ;)

[zmayhem.livejournal.com]

If you need a name, my mom is kinda-sorta out your way (Concord -- certainly much closer than SF), and has an accountant who's been dealing very smoothly and competently with her father's horribly fucked-up estate and all the miserable tax issues surrounding it. This accountant is Teh Awesome, or would be if my mom ever said things like Teh Awesome, and she has been pimping him to me for some time but the Zmayhem taxes just aren't complicated enough to need his excellence.