Slightly Off Center

Since April is super-busy, what with Market and Easter and probably a glaze firing, I spent this week working on my taxes.

Went surprisingly smoothly, between the tax software (HR Block, and it's totally worth spending extra for the Oregon return) and our habit of tracking everything in Excel spreadsheets as they happen. (My business ledger is a thing of beauty,  with columns for each space on a schedule C, and extra pages to track vehicle and home office expenses. Denise also keeps sheets for medical expenses, charitable contributions, and her businesses.) 

Being self-employed, we pay estimated taxes quarterly; for those who aren't similarly blessed, you need to pay equal to either 100% of your previous year's taxes, or 90% of this year's. Since my business is so variable from year to year, I do the former. Which is all well and good, except when you have a 2020 severely depressed by global f***ing pandemic, followed by a record-breaking 2021.

I don't owe any penalties or interest, but I'm gonna be writing a couple of really big tax checks come filing day.

Just mailed off my Oregon taxes today. 

I always tackle the taxes early, sometime in February, then leave them sit for a week or two, waiting to see I've forgotten anything. I've used a basic tax program--TurboTax once upon a time, HR Block more recently--since I first bought a computer, and up until last year, I'd just download state forms from their website. They were easy enough to do, just transfer numbers from the appropriate spots on the federal 1040. They even used to use the federal schedule A for itemized deductions, with a place to adjust for state tax payments. It was simple and quick; also free.

Last year, though, Oregon changed their form; added about six new bits on an adjustments schedule, their own deductions form, and none of the instructions in the downloadable pdf made sense to me. I made a couple of mistakes, which fortunately cancelled each other out and left me slightly to the good, but still.

So this year, I paid Block the extra $25 for the state add-on. It ran very smoothly; took most of the data it needed from the federal, I just had to make sure to get the withholding, estimated taxes and carry-over from last year input.

Comes time to file. Fed is easy, comes free with the program (with four free returns to spare). But when I went on to the state, I found out that state filing is not free, it's $19.95, which they'll be happy to take a credit or debit card number for. Or I can just have it taken out of my federal refund. 

I stomped off into the living room and growled to Denise about it. Apparently, I'd missed the fine print on this when I bought the software? She calmed me down, said it wasn't that big a deal, and we had a nice refund coming, so why not? Get it in to the state quicker.

Come back to finish filing, and see more fine print. There's an extra charge for taking the filing fee out of my refund. $39. (On top of the $19.95 already coming out.)

Nope. Nope nope nope nope nope. I back out of there quick time, get some clean paper in the printer and run out a copy. (Two copies, actually. I ran out of ink about four pages into the first set, so I've got a bunch of partially blank pages to shred, because you know the one thing that's still readable is probably my SS#.) Found a clean 6x9" envelope, and rode down to the Post Office today. 3-ounce envelope, $1.40 postage. 

A bargain.