No one told me it's the last week to file tax returns....ick

[timer lady]

My taxes have been ever so complex for years for various & sundry reasons but before the meningitis & resulting encephalopathy mixed in with cerebral vasculitis I'm not able to handle what I did on a daily basis in the work environment.

Suffice it to say my financial POAs left it til the last minute & decided that my returns were more than they could handle (my bro & his wife were up here over the weekend). I'm now scrambling to find a CPA as it's likely a bit more than H&R Block can handle or I would trust at this point.

I'm pretty sure I have until Monday the 18th but have to at least file & then request an extension til any & all information is gathered.

All this & I'm pretty sure I won't owe any monies to the IRS. Bad brain for forgetting, bad brain....I should have known.

 

[susiestar]

Ours are not that complicated but we are not done with them either. Usually I make sure the paperwork is put in a specific place but this year husband asked me to trust him to get it all done on time. So far he thinks he can find one of the documents and he hasn't even started to try to get copies or find the others. I am going nuts, but not much I can do but let him handle it. If he isn't done by We we will be having a very uncomfortable discussion - uncomfortable for him, anyway. This kind of thing is exactly why I took over doing the taxes a few years ago.

He promised me and SWORE that he would and could stay on top of it this time. Sigh.

 

[KTMom91]

I do ours early, but since we owe big this year (because I mistakenly thought taxes were taken out of Hubby's severance pay), we haven't sent anything in.

 

[Shari]

Timer, you can file the extension with no other info. It's a very basic form and automatically gives you three months. If you dont owe any taxes, there is no penalty.

 

[Hound dog]

Bad brain..........

I just started nagging husband about ours.

He says "Dear, I filed a long time ago."

I gave him a blank look. "Impossible! I have to sign it first!"

"Uh, not when I file on the computer, where are you going to sign?? You haven't signed one in years, dear." Then comes the grin.

I wanted to wipe it off his lips. (ok smack it off lol)

Ya know, he could've said something about it when he did it. sheesh Or maybe he did and I forgot. lol

 

[Star*]

Well I got some "bad" advice from someone who told me she used to work for a tax place. I was told I could still claim Dude just had to 'say' he was living at home and that he was going to school for an extra refund. While it was tempting as all get out - I filed my taxes honestly. I didn't do a revised filing either, but just to cover my bases? I did go to that HR block free look to be sure I did them right. Turns out I did. I did mine on line with Tax Slayer. As it turned out? I had to give a copy of my returns to a govt agency anyway and low and behold it had to say on there I had NO dependents - so being honest turned out to win in the end.

I recommend tax slayer to anyone. It was simple, easy and cheap.

 

[susiestar]

I have used the free file through the IRS for many years. This year many of the tax software packages are free for the fed govt anyway. If you have any questions and don't mind being on hold, you can look up the IRS toll free number and they will help you for free. Be sure to keep the name and/or ID # of the person who helped you because if they told you wrong and you can give that info, you can escape penalties for following their advice.

 

[rlsnights]

When in doubt file for an extension if you feel pretty sure you have paid nearly all of the taxes you will owe or if you can send that money with the extension. Better to take an extra week or more than make a mistake and have to amend in my humble opinion.

The deadline this year is April 18th.

If you have an electronic calendar on your computer or your phone, you might consider putting those dates into your calendar now for the next several years with several weeks lead time reminders to do the taxes or insurance or whatever.

Our taxes were a huge headache this year and I ended up hiring a CPA to the tune of nearly $600 to do them. Ouch. The IRS issued a new ruling that same sex married couples in states with community property (CA, WA and NV) have to do income splitting on their separate federal returns for 2010. Of course they didn't make this widely known until December 2010 and didn't actually issue the "rules" for doing it until Feb. 18, 2011. So our tax planning for 2010 was useless since it was based on completely different assumptions. It took me 4 days to prepare all the docs to hand over to the CPA and another 2 days to enter all the medical expenses into a spreadsheet by date/provider/amount/patient/mileage so she could sort the list and decide which of us should take which dependent(s). Over 400 entries ...


Patricia

 

[AnnieO]

Linda,

I know this feeling all too well.

Since we have all the pieces and parts, it's much better for husband and I to file married/jointly. However, I always have to wait for his business stuff. And guess what?! His silent partner - the one I absolutely despise (long story) - has taken until yesterday to provide the paperwork we need.

husband has an apppointment today with a CPA. So we'll be filing an extension. Though, since last year our medical expenses exceeded 7.5% of income, it shouldn't be a pay situation... Thank goodness!

ARGH.

 

[Star*]

rls -

Do you think that new scanner thing they are advertising that sorts all your receipts would help you this year? Just saw that on TV and in Staples and was going to get one for my Mom. I'd get one for myself, but I don't have anything to buy let alone anything to itemize....lol.

Sounds like it's pretty organized software you can set up to do your's, mine, ours - etc.

 

[rlsnights]

Thanks for the suggestion. My sister pointed that out to me too. I've looked at them in the past and did it again in more detail this tax season with the same idea.

Most of them require that you hand feed every single receipt individually. The ones that have an automatic feeder won't work with receipts that are every size from full sheet to itsy-bitsy without more handling like taping the little receipts to a bigger piece of paper. So that didn't seem like it would be much of a time savings or convenience.

And the ones that have the software that turns the receipt into a searchable PDF document seem to be kind of pricey - $200+. Without that feature it's not helpful to me except for storage and a box is lot less expensive way to store something I'm going to use once and then put away until I throw it away in 7 years. Since we are seriously pinching pennies here my final conclusion was that the pros didn't out weigh the cons plus the cost.

After doing it for years and years I kind of have a system set up so I don't actually have to handle the paper receipts much, although I do collect and keep them. Instead we charge all the medical expenses we can to two different credit cards (one is Amex and some places won't take it so I have a 2nd dedicated Visa card). That way I just have to deal with the credit card statements for most of our expenses. Amex has always done year end statements but this year they made it sortable and searchable and downloadable and every -able I could dream of. I nearly swooned let me tell you when I discovered all the things I could do with our year end statement online this year.

The reason it was soooo much of a pain and time consuming to do the medical expenses this year was because I had to create a spreadsheet with every single medical expense entered along with who the expense was for (no more lumping it all together) and divvy up the mileage expense by person too. I had to list exactly how each item was paid because most of it was paid with community income but a little was paid with separate income and those now have to be accounted for separately. Some receipts are for more than one person - I often pick up several rx's at once for 3 people so I had to go through all those receipts and account for each person's expenses separately from one receipt. And when I am doing it for myself I can take shortcuts I can't take when I'm creating a spreadsheet for someone else to use.

Now that I know what has to be done I will be charging each person's rx's or co-pay separately so I don't have to go through and match Walgreen register receipts RX # to the actual RX information that comes with the bottle. That was what was the most labor intensive part of the process this year.

 

[timer lady]

Thanks all...rls, I was looking into that scanner for myself. I never thought to track expenses via spreadsheet ~ think I'll start that up.

No CPA (they're all booked) so it looks as tho I'll be doing the turbo tax thing & asking for an extension til I can get a CPA to double check my returns.