Relaxation and Taxation. And Shopping!

[canyonwalker]

We took it easy this weekend. After going out hiking twice each weekend for the past few weeks we rested up this weekend. My back still hurts like a week ago so I figured a brief stand-down would help. And this weekend the last tax form I was waiting on became ready, so I dove in to preparing my tax return. It was a weekend of relaxation and taxation. Oh, and shopping.

Shopping-wise, we hunted around for more of those plates and bowls we've been replacing our old set with. We hit several HomeGoods/Marshalls stores— the only place that carries them, and even then it's very spotty— after lunch on Saturday.

Sunday morning I started on the taxes. I worked until lunch. When I got back, the TurboTax site was apparently down. Well, I wanted to use the hot tub anyway. That seemed like a good time to do it!



The dip in the hot tub was nice. What I really wanted, though, was to finish my dang taxes. 😅

I was able to get back online with TurboTax after dinner. I completed the first pass through my return. Unfortunately TurboTax has something wrong in my taxes— as usual, frankly— and shows me owing nearly $1,700 more than my own estimates indicate. I'll have to dig in to fix that this coming week. Ah, TurboTax, my abusive relationship partner.

Comments

[some_other_dave]

It may be abusive, but they have been worse to a lot of other folks. They are in hot water now for (more or less) tricking people into paying to file their taxes on the "free" version of the website.

They have an arbitration-only clause written into their EULA, and they're starting to regret that, as a whole lot of people are now going that route and it's costing them a lot of money...

[canyonwalker]

My beef with TT isn't like that. They've never duped me into anything. They're more like the abusive relationship partner who helps me do things but also quietly does some small fraction of them wrong, so I have to keep constantly watching and checking what they're doing. See my post and amusing illustration from last year at https://canyonwalker.dreamwidth.org/30627.html.

[some_other_dave]

Sadly, we've just been contacted by the IRS about our return from 2019.

We looked into what the letter said, and it looks like they are right. We did not report income from a stock sale from Lisa's last employer. In part because the outfit the employer used to do the transactions only sent the tax forms to her work email, which didn't exist by the time they sent it. (Or perhaps did exist but was disabled? Don't know how they handle that stuff.)

We should have caught that but we didn't. Now we owe a significant chunk of change, plus the inevitable interest and penalties.

Lisa was able to get ahold of the forms, and we forwarded them to our accountant, who will be putting together an "I'm very sorry, this is how it happened, it was not intentional, please don't hurt us" letter.

[canyonwalker]

Yikes. Getting that kind of letter from the IRS is never fun. I got one several years ago and spent a whole weekend sweating it (I checked my mail as we were headed out of town) before I was able to look into it. In my case, too, the IRS was right. I'd overlooked some rule or forgotten to report some item of income. I wrote them a prompt letter acknowledging the mistake and asking them to tell me how much I owed with interest and penalties added to the balance. I think because I didn't fight them on it they waived the interest and penalties "in the interest of fairness" (their words).

Likely, too, it helped that the amount of tax I failed to pay was a small fraction of my overall federal income tax burden, less than 2% IIRC.

Good luck with your situation!