Finally, progress on US taxes

[mtbc]

This gap in between jobs is a chance for me to catch up on some neglected chores. Today's focus was last year's taxes for the IRS. (I had filed for an extension.) They take me more than a day partly because there are new things to figure out each year. This year's, so far, turn out to have been: how to use my lifetime allowance in calculating gift tax, and how to concisely report capital gains when a small fraction had loss disallowed as a wash sale^*. Alas, this year's taxes will be no easier.

^*I did not sell simply in order to realize a loss to reduce my taxable income but, of course, the IRS suspect that may have been my motive.

Comments

[thewayne]

I do my own taxes on the H&R Block web site. Got to the state portion, and they wanted to charge me, IIRC, $49 to file a $45 refund.

Yeah.

So I did them myself on the state website and paid nothing and got a $98 refund.

[mtbc]

I really look forward to having simpler taxes again in a couple of years' time. This year I'm again filing horribly many interacting forms of the kind that tend to expose bugs in the automated systems and that would cost me many thousands of dollars to have a professional do and, goodness knows, just about every professional I engage for anything makes careless mistakes if I don't check all the detail myself anyway. Right now I'm into yet another twisty maze of worksheets. (Filing form 2555 is a surefire way to be switched into okay, now you get to do it the complicated way.)

[thewayne]

It is ridiculous how our system works, and it's all because of corps buying congresscritters to game the system.

[mtbc]

I'd actually quite like being paid full-time for nicely encoding all these rules so I can implement them in a clearly explained way. But, I've read a variety of Federal and state law over the years and, of what I've read, the tax code is by far the least penetrable.

Excellently, from my current draft, I don't think I'm liable for a penalty for underpaying tax a little. We'll see how a review for mistakes goes …

[thewayne]

Once upon a time a tax bill was introduced in Congress.  It was very obtuse, and it didn't seem to benefit the public - or corporations - very much.  So some tax experts started picking it apart.  In the end it was discovered to benefit ONE person.  H. Ross Perot.  An entire tax bill for one person.  I don't remember whether or not it passed.