10:13 – I have to at least get started on our state and federal income taxes today. It’s probably no coincidence that every year during the first half of April I’m in a bad mood.
We got through all but the last four episodes of Heartland S9 last night. We’ll watch those last four tonight. Tomorrow we’ll start on Murdoch Mysteries S9.
Last night, I read Thomas A. Lewis’s Tribulation. This was a first for me, a PA novel written by a leftie/prog/greenie/climatista. It’s competently written and, no surprise, quite similar to other TEOTWAWKI novels. The major difference is that instead of conservative propaganda threaded into the story-line, we get prog propaganda in this one. Still, it’s not bad. Even Kirkus Reviews had nice things to say about it.
My family claims I am unbearable during tax season. I have no reason to disagree with them.
I despise the tax system. The fact that it would be to my advantage to pay someone else to figure out my taxes just pisses me off. I’ll spend a LOT of time figuring out what I owe. Time I could better spend making money. It’s not supposed to be welfare for accountants.
Even the IRS has a hard time figuring out the taxes. On one occasion I was given conflicting advice. I chose the advice that benefited me and kept all the documentation. In case of an audit with a different outcome I would not be charged any penalties but would be charged interest. In my opinion I should not even be charged any interest. That was 10 years ago so I think I am past the audit point. But if I piss some agent in the IRS off I have no doubt the agent would go back as far as he/she could looking for some way to get even.
Bleah, you had to mention taxes. Since our kids are both still US citizens, and the older one has a real job now, he needs to file taxes. Due June 15th, but I really ought to get it done this week. Filing taxes as an American living abroad is such a pain, because you not only report your income, but also the balance of your bank account. And you have to report the same information – but on different forms, of course – both to the IRS and to the Treasury Dept..
Of course, there’s no real way to know, or find out about, changes to the regulations. Three or four years ago, I found out about the (then new) requirement to tell the IRS about your bank accounts. Purely by accident – neither the IRS nor the online tax programs informed me. As OFD can confirm, dangerous as hell. The IRS certainly wouldn’t offer any sympathy, just because they changed requirements and didn’t inform the lowly tax payer.
Mine are done, and the refund already figured. (I would prefer a very small refund, but don’t have control over how my wife gets paid.)
I don’t do my own lawyering, doctoring, or tax prep. Get it wrong and you could pay with your life or livelihood. Any competent tax prep, especially an ‘enrolled agent’ will save you far more than they cost, and provide backup and peace of mind if there is a problem. Unless you are filing 1040EZ, get a CPA, especially one who is also an enrolled agent, and get some help.
nick
NB, I’ve been using help since I had to file 1040A instead of EZ due to receiving unemployment benefits. It’s worth it.
added- you wouldn’t go to a part time doctor or part time lawyer, so don’t do that with your taxes either. Go to a full time professional who lives and breathes the changes and minutia, preferably one who LOVES what they do.
added- they will know about the changes because they subscribe to a federal newsletter with the changes in it, and professional magazines (and it’s their JOB).
“Filing taxes as an American living abroad is such a pain, because you not only report your income, but also the balance of your bank account. And you have to report the same information – but on different forms, of course – both to the IRS and to the Treasury Dept..”
Absolutely obscene and outrageous, every bit of it. And another reason for someone to think very carefully and strategically about Sovereign Man’s usual advice to move out of the country and take up life in a foreign haven somewhere. The bastards will come after your money anyway.
Good advice, Mr. nick, on leaving the forms beyond the EZ to a pro. I’ll take a look at our stuff this week, file for an extension, and then locate one of those guys or gals. Mrs. OFD and I are really sick and tired of hassling with all the paperwork and still being hammered and threatened anyway.
@OFD,
Keep in mind that when you file for the extension, you still have to pay what you think you will owe. IIRC.
But yeah, it’s too important, and too unpleasant, to do yourself.
The more organized you are, the cheaper your preparation will be too. They usually add in a ‘hassle factor.’ We use Quicken, with the rental property extension. For a while my wife used MSMoney, but they abandoned it, and we went back to Quicken. Quicken has it’s quirks, but it is powerful and gets easier to use the longer you use it. You can easily generate all the reports and summaries your preparer will need.
Little overshare–
Way back in the day, someone I know *cough* missed a couple of payments on a payment agreement with the IRS, and returned from a business trip to find all his accounts emptied. In a panic, and rage, he consulted with a fellow business owner who gave him the sage advice to wait until he had an agent assigned to his case, then argue that he needed the money back in order to pay his bills, and not destroy his business. Complicating things, one of the accounts seized had his ‘road float’ which is money that belongs to the client, but has been advanced to cover out of pocket expenses incurred on the client’s behalf. In other words, that money didn’t belong to him.
Upon contacting his assigned agent, my friend *cough* started explaining that A some of the money wasn’t his, B all of the remaining money was needed to pay the 2 months of past due bills that had accrued while he was away, and C his business would be destroyed if his client’s money was seized. The agent started out saying “Tough shit, nothing we can do.” but ended up saying “send me the documentation, and we’ll see if we can’t do something.” Fortunately, my friend had used Quicken to trace every dollar made and spent for the last couple years and was able to document the source of the deposits, and was able to generate 43 PAGES of documentation showing cash flow by month, income and expenses by month, and everything else he could think of to bolster his claim that he needed the money back, couldn’t afford his current payments, and that his income was too variable to make estimated quarterly payments with any hope of accuracy.
My friend got all his money back, less the missed payments, a reduced monthly payment plan, and a letter saying he didn’t need to make estimated quarterlies.
Without Quicken, and the ability to quickly document his claims and show that he really didn’t have the money, and couldn’t afford the payments, he’d have been SCREWED.
I love quicken (I’m quite sure my friend does too.) It took about an hour to generate the 43 pages, and almost that long to fax them to the IRS. (at $1/page, hence the very clear recollection of the number of pages involved)
nick
Re: @Brad’s problem with finding the right computer on the Dell site: I am replacing my 5 year old HP Pavillion laptop (still works, even with a corner of the case missing, but time for a new one).
I had specific requirements (SSD+hard drive, lots of memory, 17″ touch screen, fingerprint reader (really like that for password sites), backlit keyboard. Only HP seems to have fingerprint readers, so had been wandering around that site looking for one with all the right specs.
Couldn’t find the exact one I wanted, so did the ‘live chat’ thing and gave them my requirements list. They came up with a model with all the specs I wanted, and the price was within the range I expected. So I ordered it.
Was only supposed to take 3 weeks to build/ship (which is normal for HP, I think). Then got an email that ‘production delays’ would add another three weeks to the ship (HP is in the middle of a new round of systems), so haven’t gotten it yet.
I had actually ordered a similar model from a customizer of HP laptops found on Amazon. Got it within a week, but came with a dented screen bezel. Returned it OK with full refund, but they didn’t have another one like it in stock (they said). So then went with the HP Live Chat thing.
So, if you are looking for a specific model/specs, try the ‘live chat’ thing to see if they can find what you want easier than digging around the website. Most vendors have the ‘live chat’ thing.
“…you still have to pay what you think you will owe…”
We don’t have anywhere near even 1/20th of what THEY say we owe, on hand, to pay them. We have a monthly payment agreement from which they rob us automatically, and whatever last year’s nut is will get rolled over into that. It’s a mess, between wife’s independent contractor status and my unemployment and SS payments, and a kid in a foreign university. So this year, with the extension, and the time to collect all the documents, we’ll go to a pro.
And we’ll take some version of Mr. nick’s advice in re: Quicken, probably, for future stuff; the past ten years have been a disaster as far as all this stuff is concerned. We’ve had our accounts frozen/seized twice, and neither time was our fault, it was all on them and their mistake. And we lost many hundreds of dollars in OD fees on checks that bounced, plus our credit taking a big hit, right after buying this house. Zero response from the IRS and “tough shit” from the bank.
And Mr. nick’s friend was pretty sharp and on the ball to have had all that stuff documented and ready to hand. Congrats!
I’ll add that quicken has saved my tax bacon in other ways too.
I spent years as a contractor, getting both per diem and reimbursable expenses. You occasionally get a client that doesn’t send you the correct tax forms, or purposely sends you the wrong ones simply because it’s easier for them. Quicken will easily spit out your reimbursable expenses (if you put them in that way, or always use the same credit card for reimbursables) and compare it to reimbursements received, and you can use that to file if you (for example) get a single 1099 from a client, instead of the 2 that you should get, making your reimbursement look like income. Or in the event of an audit, all your per diem deposits look like income, and so do all your expense checks, but you’ve tracked them as what they are, and tracked all your on the road spending as such and you can quickly show that you spent every dollar of pd and then some, saving you from paying tax on any excess and saving you from paying tax on your reimbursement.
The graphs and charts are neat too. They can help you identify your spending, and see where the He!! your money goes…
(Forex, for several years I spent about 9% of my net income on telecommunications. That’s a lot! But I was traveling, had internet and multiple phone lines, multiple cell services, backups for the backups, etc. I was able to identify the spending and make a decision whether or not to change it.)
You may find you spend a lot more on books or movies than your realized…
nick
I’ve used a CPA for 10 years for the biz and personal stuff. I used to do it all, but the regs have become to involved and new ones each year. We use Quickbooks Online for the biz and the CPA has an “accountant” login and can do remote stuff for me. He still likes to come over for the quarterlyies ( and to BS about Obola, Cankles and other fukstiks).
Mr. OFD, you should incorporate Mrs. OFD. Get the IRS off your personal back.
They can help you identify your spending, and see where the He!! your money goes…
Shocking when I see how much I have spent at Walmart since January 1, 1992.
^^ that’s exactly what I mean. Slice and dice the data, and get some real numbers.
nick
I received a 2% raise this year. My take-home pay dropped by over $200. Thank you IRS. My businesses made a few thousand profit this year. So the IRS decided to eliminate that with a new tax demand AND demands for huge quarterly payments. As I told my son “The good news is we made money. The bad news is we made money”. It’s like the government doesn’t want us to succeed. When I lived abroad (London, Hong Kong, Auckland) paying dual taxes was a nightmare. Had to hire expensive tax experts to keep everything straight. Hong Kong was the easiest. Flat, 10% tax rate, one page form. The US is one of only a handful of countries that lay claim to whatever the person makes no matter where it is earned nor where they live. Creepy.
I suspect that every country which taxes its citizens (which is approximately every country) would tax them worldwide if they could manage it. The US is probably the only country with the tentacles and muscles to pull it off.
“Mr. OFD, you should incorporate Mrs. OFD. Get the IRS off your personal back.”
I’ll run that by her and meanwhile consult about it with whoever we get to look at our stuff; I’ve also already set myself up with a state of Vermont LLC.
“It’s like the government doesn’t want us to succeed.”
Au contraire, my friend; they DO want you to succeed. They simply want a bigger cut of the proceeds. At gunpoint, if necessary.
“The US is probably the only country with the tentacles and muscles to pull it off.”
I believe you are correct, sir, and this will be the case for a while longer. But movements are afoot to get out from under this Empire, worldwide, and no more so than financially.
“Shocking when I see how much I have spent at Walmart since January 1, 1992.”
Yeah, no doubt, but you just went there so often to look at all them hotties, dincha?
Off to Lake Chelan, WA tomorrow. TSA fondling, SEATAC then a four hour drive. Back to SEATAC Thu on to SLC then late flight Fri to Vegas. Did I mention the fondling? I should have TSA Pre so hope to miss the fondling.
Mr. Atoz: after you cross the Hood Canal Bridge (nice view of the snow-covered Olympic Mountains), wave to the right as you pass the turnoff towards my little part of Port Ludlow.
But, don’t stop to eat until you get to Highway 20 turnoff, and stop at the Fat Smitty’s Burgers (https://www.facebook.com/pages/Fat-Smittys/111433978890681 ) . Get the big Fat Smitty burger, plus the onion rings, and a milkshake. Don’t forget to leave your dollar bill on the wall (or ceiling – there are thousands of them on there). Guaranteed to leave there stuffed….Recommended.
MrAtoz don’t care ’bout no burgers; he all ’bout da fondling.
http://happyacres.tumblr.com/post/142632744644/if-youre-a-liberal-this-equation-is-rocket
Yup. Don’t believe it? Then start crackin’ dem history books.
And from the Deck Apes and Swabbies Department:
http://observer.com/2016/04/amid-shocking-chinese-spy-case-our-navy-can-no-longer-be-trusted/
Riddled with spies. Just great.
Note: my reference to deck apes and swabbies is not meant to be derogatory, but affectionate hackin’ on ya. My dad was a Coastie in WWII, uncle on a Navy destroyer shelling the shit outta the commies in ‘Nam, and maternal grandpa a Navy guy for three years in North Africa during the Good War.
I was both a flyboy/zoomie and a dogface pig.
“MrAtoz don’t care ’bout no burgers; he all ’bout da fondling.”
I’m sure most of us wouldn’t mind if the TSA agent was Sandra Bullock.
RE: IRS Payments
Back in ’94 I was making good money as a traveling consultant. Then in Jan ’95 my eldest son was murdered. I was so freaking depressed I didn’t even think about filing tax return. Just moped for over 6 months. Then moved to Nottingham in the UK, took a 50% cut in pay, and figured the change in scenery would get me interested in life again. The scenery helped but having custody of our toddler granddaughter was what kept us sane. In ’98 the IRS realized I had skipped a year. I had all the paperwork, filled it, but they still gave me a HUGE penalty and interest. Couldn’t pay it so we negotiated a payment schedule. Every month I sent them $220. Month after month. By 2005 I wondered how much I had left to pay so I wrote the IRS asking. They sent me back a letter saying they had made a mistake in calculating the amount I owed. They told me I was up-to-date and sent a check for $20,000 US. That was more than I had paid in. I am not complaining.
I still do our taxes with the help of a computer. I have always done my own taxes and the only issue has been the time in 1987 or 1988 that I switched the state and federal checks. I’m probably the odd man out on this, but my late mother was at one point an IRS auditor and later an attorney. So I think I can handle my taxes unless I do something crazy like open my own business. Even then, I would have to understand my return before I filed it, so I would probably be the first person to pay a professional to double check his return rather than file it.
“I’m sure most of us wouldn’t mind if the TSA agent was Sandra Bullock.”
You’re more likely to get Rosie O’Donnell, Whoopi Goldberg, or better yet Caitlyn Jenner.
And I have to fly to Lost Wages on Sunday. Thanks for putting THAT image in my head.
Mr. JimL, make sure to leave plenty of your disposable income here.
Argh! Me brother is a retired squid. Argh! A deck swabber fer sure.
MrAtoz made a funny. Disposable income in April. (ouch!)
“… I wondered how much I had left to pay so I wrote the IRS asking.”
We’ve noticed they don’t volunteer this information; we have to root it out, tediously. Evidently they’d let us all just keep paying indefinitely and I bet Boston to a brick that it’s deliberate and they have orders at some level to do it that way.
“You’re more likely to get Rosie O’Donnell, Whoopi Goldberg, or better yet Caitlyn Jenner.”
The several molestation accusations and incidents concerning TSA fondling seem to be homosexual in nature; it’s been fugly beast women fondling girls and creepy guys fondling men and boys. Yes, I realize this is a micro/macro aggression to even mention it. But we can rest assured it won’t be Sandra Bullock or Kate Winslet playing pocket pool with us.
We are in the Big Easy. We DROVE here, only 400 miles.
“We are in the Big Easy.”
Laissez les bon temps rouler, mes amis!
Home of Andrei Codrescu, Romanian exile, lefty poet/novelist and commentator for NPR.
Fun drive or what?
wave to the right as you pass the turnoff towards my little part of Port Ludlow
My aunt lived in Port Townsend, Beckett Point to be precise. House up on the hill over looking at Discovery Bay and across to highway 101 and the mountains in the Olympic National Park. Beautiful view. My wife commented that when you woke in the morning it was like looking at a picture except the boats were moving.
Visited the area many times. Never did stop at Fat Smitty’s Burgers. Been through Port Ludlow, Port Hadlock, Sequim, Chimacum (which has a good eatery), and Port Townsend. Been on the Bainbridge Ferry, ferry from Port Townsend to Whidbey Island. Wonderful country.
The drive almost sucked. I-10 all the way. For the most traveled interstate in the USA (my opinion), one would think that we could afford to add a lane to each side. Horrendous traffic jams on a Sunday afternoon in Houston, Beaumont, Baton Rouge, and New Orleans.
My brother lives in Port Orchard.
“Horrendous traffic jams on a Sunday afternoon in Houston, Beaumont, Baton Rouge, and New Orleans.”
Your northern correspondent here is badly spoiled; I sometimes hit the late afternoon “rush hour” in downtown Saint Albans three miles to our east and am flummoxed by it, even though the whole thing lasts about half an hour, total. I go down to Burlap and I’m gobsmacked by how much damn traffic, bumper to bumper, there is on whatever day of the week, pop. roughly 50k there. Something like I-10 or greater Boston or NYC or Atlanta would utterly blow my tiny little mind.
I am mos def NOT a city boy and always feel badly outta place and like I stick out akin to the proverbial sore thumb in any of them.
We arrived at the airport gate, due to TSA being short agents, no Pre-Check line. $80 down the toilet for this flight. Can I get a refund? Haha! MrsAtoz just threw her toiletries in her carry on. No quart baggie. She uses that pricey Perricone stuff, too. A couple hundred dollars worth, plus liquid makeup etc. I told her just send your carry on through. Yep, TSA said nada. Gummint work at it’s finest. TSA agent said show your Pre-Check boarding pass to the screener. OK. Take your liquids out, take your laptop out, take your belt off. Oh, you can leave your shoes on. Thanks. MrsAtoz had metal buckles on her choos. They didn’t make it through. lol!
I’m sure glad that the TSA puts peeps like Mr. and Mrs. Atoz through their security theater wringer just so we have a nice show of national security professionals protecting our nayshun’s freedumb and liberty and suchlike. Meanwhile those aircraft cargo holds are wide open, no one checks the baggage handlers, and various tests have been run illustrating just how much of a joke all this really is, with guns, explosives, knives, etc., all being successfully carried onto aircraft.
But by Jeezum, they got Mrs. Atoz’s shoe buckles and her Perricone liquids! Another great blow struck for FREEDUMB! Ave Caesar! Ave Caesar’s Palace!
But, we were born free!
“But, we were born free!”
And it lasted until the Doc swatted us on the butt. We’ve been crying ever since.
Reminds me of the old joke; “I was so ugly that when I was born, the doctor slapped my mother!”
I weighed in over eight pounds, but my little sister came in over ten. She’s now recovering from cancer chemo and surgery, eight years younger than me, and I bet I outweigh her now by 130 pounds. Little brother, ten years younger than me, is another cancer (prostate) survivor and now also has to take a pill daily for a heart condition. A guy who is fanatic about what he eats and who has jogged distances every day for YEARS.
I did every drug in the book, drank myself almost to death, and otherwise did everything I could to mess myself up and get killed, and here I am. I must be getting saved for something worse.
re flying and the
TSAMineta’s MoronsRidge’s RetardsNeffenger’s Numbskulls, I’ll repeat what I always say: so long as you keep flying and keep putting up with the security theater, you’re supporting it and your complaints are just noise. If enough people cared about their freedom and dignity to stop flying, policies would change in a month.“If enough people cared about their freedom and dignity to stop flying…”
That would mean that hundreds of thousands would have to stop flying and find other means of transportation, and for a lot of them, maybe even most, I dunno, it’s their livelihood, as is true for Mrs. OFD and MrsAtoz, for example. Mrs. OFD would have had to take a train, I guess, or drive to Denver last week.
This is sorta akin to me telling other veterans and their families that if we wanna stop the wars and sending our kids to them, then we and our kids gotta quit signing up, else our complaints are also just noise. But they won’t do it; too many of them have drunk the Kool-Aid, which comes in the several flavors of Needing to Make a Living, Needing to Leave Home, Needing to Carry on a Family Tradition, Needing to be a Warrior-Hero, etc.
What course is there, then? Only one I can think of is bombardment of the airlines and Congress and the media/innernet with an avalanche of protest and complaint. For either situation; but peeps are lazy and complacent. The State tells us we are under direct threat of attack all the time from Oceania and whatever that other empire was in “1984,” and we sign up for the military, and we sit still for abuses of our liberty in the hope of greater security. Both lies, as we all ought to know by now.
We have no better security because they nailed MrsAtoz for her liquid makeup and shoe buckles, nor are we safer from enemy hordes because I shot commies in SEA and my wife’s cousins are or were shooting hadjis in Afghanistan and Iraq.
I’d say in short that there would have to be gigantic shit-storms of protest for either issue, whether TSA theater or the endless wars. And I don’t see it happening anytime soon.
I’m very glad I’m not flying twice a week any more. Anyone who flies knows ways to get thru security, has stories about missed items, and probably saw something and didn’t say anything because they didn’t want to be late themselves.
Some of the stupidity on display is mind boggling. I watched TSA wand someone’s bare legs and bare feet. When I mentioned it to my TSA screener, she said “oh he’s just going thru the motions.” Then she asked what my pager was, admitted she’d never owned one OR a cell phone. How the help could she identify something sketchy if she’d never had the real thing? Most of them have never flown, or even left their homes, especially at smaller airports.
It certainly serves to accustom the people to their status as sheep to be sheared for the profit of the lords…
nick
“… their status as sheep to be sheared for the profit of the lords…”
And probably to be hunted down for sport or put in the Hunger Games or simply taken away for rape, torture and murder, like they were doing in Sarajevo and Belgrade.