Taxes Wheeeeeee

[rowyn]

So, thanks to terrycloth whinging talking about finishing his tax return on multiple different days, I remembered that I had to do mine.

I actually did them online. Again. Like last year, because I hadn't learned my lesson yet. NOW I HAVE.

I did learn three things from last year's nightmare adventure.

1) Never, ever, use TaxACT's* site. Ever. Okay, if they were personally going to pay me at least $500 for using their site to file my taxes, I might think about it. Maybe. Basically, their site made you answer roughly a thousand questions, each on its own page. With a fresh page load between each question. "Are you a veteran? Y/N" Click no. Click continue. Wait for page load. "Did you buy a home in 2008? Y/N" Click no. Click continue. Wait for new page load. Repeat 998 more times. To add to the unbridled joy of the process, my desktop computer has inexplicable problems loading webpages, so about 75% of the time the next page didn't load properly. x.x

2) Don't use my desktop computer to do taxes. See #1.

3) Don't wait until 4/15 to do your taxes online, because any problems you have with the site will only be exacerbated by thirty million other people doing their taxes at the same time.

Armed with this knowledge, I waited until 3/29 to start doing my taxes this year. I picked a new site, eSmartTax, and used my netbook to file them because my netbook is not cursed doesn't have the page-load problem that my desktop does. ESmartTax was not as bad as TaxACT. This should not be taken as a recommendation. The most annoying part was (still) the stupid repeated page load issue. Not nearly as many pageloads as TaxACT, but it made up for this by making you click through every screen in a section if you needed to change one thing. The tax portion had six sections: Personal Information, W-2, 1099s, etc., Schedules and other forms, Federal, State, and File. I forgot to pick "schedule A" when I was picking which tax forms I wanted. So when I got to the standard deduction part in the Federal section, it made me go back to the schedules, pick schedule A, fill it out, click through all the other schedules that I didn't want to change, and then click through all the Federal pages that I also didn't want to change.

Then I needed to check on one of my deduction amounts. Then I forgot about it for a week, until terrycloth wrote about taxes again. Last night, I finished filing them while exercising (because hey, as long as you're suffering anyway, why not do taxes?) This required that I change one line on schedule A, to update my deductions. Which necessitated about 15 click-throughs and page loads on the ESmartTax site BECAUSE WE HATE OUR CUSTOMERS.

This morning, I got an email saying my tax return had been rejected. x.x

So I went back to their site, which told me that the employer EIN on my W-2 didn't match the IRS's. I'd typed a 2 instead of a 3 in the EIN field. Okay, I need to change one line on the W-2 form.

Which on eSmartTax meant 5 clicks-and-page-loads to get to the W-2, and then 40 more clicks-and-page-loads because DID I MENTION WE HATE OUR CUSTOMERS? #$%^$# FREELOADERS eSmartTax wanted me to look at every screen involved in my return again because I'd changed one line on my W-2 that affected absolutely nothing else on the return. Oh, and trying to get me to file my state tax through them again. No, thank you, I'm not paying you to do my state taxes when the form from the state's website will do them (a) for free and more importantly (b) FASTER.

So this year's lesson:

4) Don't do your taxes on a website. Any website.

Next year, I think I'll just fill them out manually. Yeah, I could pay $25 for a program to install, but frankly, I am not convinced that the software is actually going to save me any time. My taxes are pretty simple: I have one job, in the same state where I work, all my investments are in IRAs or 401(k)s, and while I do itemize my deductions, that's just one extra form. It doesn't seem like the software is spotting anything for me that I didn't already know, and it's been in many (many, many) ways more annoying than just filling out the stupid forms myself.

I still need to download the forms to my desktop, and fill out and file my state taxes. But the state taxes take like five minutes to do on the state website. I'm betting downloading the completed forms from eSmartTax will be more arduous. 9.9

* Possibly the site was named TaxCut, but I'm pretty sure it was TaxACT**. I'll never use TaxCut either, though. JUST IN CASE.

** OK, I double-checked and yes, it was TaxACT. My apologies to TaxCut for the unfortunate similarity of your name. Really, I'm sorry. Because I'm still never going to use you.

Comments

[shockwave77598.livejournal.com]

H R Block's "at home" (was Taxcut) is about 35$ and is all done on your computer without using the web except to update the laws and send your return. I don't use websites for taxes either, but the time and effort savings in doing the taxes on my PC instead of wasting an entire weekend doing it by hand. But Taxcut has been my preferred program for almost a decade and has never let me down.

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah, if my taxes were complicated -- I suspect being married with kids makes yours trickier, as would having taxable investments -- I'd probably fork out for tax software. But honestly, when I did my taxes by hand it only took me a couple of hours. The most time-consuming part of the process is getting all the pieces of paper (W-2, 1099s, deductions, etc.) in one place, and software doesn't help with that. :/

But if I do them manually next year, I'm gonna time how long it takes. Maybe the year after I'll give installed software a try and see if it's faster for me. :)

[shockwave77598.livejournal.com]

All papers go into the TAX box on my desk. Then I sort them into 1099s, Income, and deductions (like the mortgage statement and the like.) Then I just checkmark the spots in the tax software, enter the data, and poof it's done. Yes, mine are a little more complex. They were a LOT more complex when I ran a DBA from the house. But the most I've ever had to spend doing the taxes on the computer was 4 hours, and that was because I had to hand create a depreciation schedule for all the capital investments in the DBA that year. It's worth the cost of a few lunchs to me to not waste several weekends because I added a number wrong somewhere.

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

I used TurboTax Online myself this year. It was pretty good!

[(Anonymous)]

*perks* I may look at that next year, then. If someone else has already vetted it for me I can give it a try.

I'm still half-hoping the IRS themselves will put out something. There's been talk about that. :)

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

Well, I got a discount on it from my stock broker (as part of the employee stock option program we get here) so I figured I'd give it a try. To my surprise, it wasn't a download, but an online service! They will, be forewarned, offer to sell you state tax preparation, etc.

There were still pages of clicking through various things but they broke it up into sections so rather than have one page for each question, you'd have a set of checkboxes. It had a good progress tracker, and gave you the option of printing via PDF or filing electronically.

[kagetsume.livejournal.com]

TurboTax online works pretty good. I've used it for 8 years now.

-- Kagetsume

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

I got hooked on the tax software when they used to discount it to $5-$10 the week before taxes were due. They stopped doing that, though.

[minor-architect.livejournal.com]

Here's what I loved about doing my taxes this year:

US Federal Government: (after an hour's worth of work) You still owe us money. That'll be $44.96, please.

Me: Forty-four dollars...and ninety-six cents? That's it?

US Federal Government: That's right. Please make your check payable to-

Me: (muttering) Our tax code is seriously weird.

State Government: Oh hey, sorry to interrupt, but you still owe us money, too. That'll be $19.00, please.

Me: Wait, what?!? All this over the price of someone's dinner? Couldn't you just use my money for ten free school lunches or something?

State Government: Great. Another bleeding-heart liberal.

US Federal Government: No need to worry, ma'am, we'll put your money to good use. Now if you'd just make your check payable to-

Me: (grumbling and pulling out my checkbook) Whatever.