Tax Season Starts Today (Yay?)

[canyonwalker]

It's official, tax season starts today! Where "official" means the IRS is now accepting tax returns. Yay? 

I don't know anybody who really celebrates tax season. Even the accountants who make most of their annual income during tax season look at it with a degree of dread because it means a few months of working nights and weekends.

Likewise I don't know anybody who actually files taxes this early. Even the majority of the working and middle class who expect a refund— ergo, getting it earlier is better— mostly drag their feet on filing. I'm pretty much the only person I know who ever used to file taxes in late January or early February.

Last year I did my taxes on Valentine's Day and filed the return in early March. It's a bit later than I used to file, say, 20 years ago. The difference is that some of the financial statements I need nowadays take longer to be generated. We've actually got our W2s already, along with some other forms. Our 1099s are currently promised mid-February. Maybe they'll arrive a bit early so I can have another fun Valentine's Day!

Comments

[some_other_dave]

We do ours a bit later because it seems that one or another organization is late in getting us the forms we need. (W-2s, 1098s, etc.)

Back when I first started paying taxes, I would do them as early as I reasonably could. I wound up having to do two amended returns because my employer messed up my W-2. IIRC, they had put something in the wrong box on the original, and had to give us a corrected one. Different boxes each year, I think.

So my amended return was identical to the first return, just with a new but functionally unchanged W-2.

After that, I put off doing my taxes for a while, out of fear that I'd have to do the same damned thing again, and risk getting audited for my troubles... Then it became a habit.

[canyonwalker]

There was one year several years back where Congress or the IRS allowed banks to get paperwork to people later. I forget what the reason was. But that year our 1099s only arrived around March 21st. And then after I filed my taxes around March 31 at least one bank hit me with an amended form right before the April 15 deadline. Thankfully it didn't make a difference in the tax I owed or critical numbers I had to report... though I had to go through the whole process of recalculation to determine that.

[canyonwalker]

Adding to my reply above.... The fact that I may get hit with revised paperwork later is why although I complete my tax forms in mid- to late February, whenever I have the figures I need, I usually then pause submitting the forms until at least mid-March.