Taxes are taxing

I finally recovered from tax season to blog about it. It was the first time that we had to file taxes together and our styles of organization (or lack thereof) really showed through. I knew about (and have experienced firsthand) the squabbles/discussions newlyweds get into about chores (check), time spent with family (check), finances (check) but it didn't register with me about which filing status to use and more importantly, that you have to really coordinate to get this onerous task done. It didn't help that we had all sorts of statements and attachments (the co-op was a further complication that we're not familiar with). When all was said and done, our federal return was probably 50 pages thick altogether (state was only about 20 pages) and the checks we had to write were enough to pay for a kid's education in the third world. :(

This year was also different because I usually do my taxes manually (that tradition started years ago with a challenge to myself since I suck at math but it turned out to be quite interesting and educational) but Dear likes to use a program and we opted to go that route since we have all these complicated issues. TaxCut was pretty easy to use and I can see it being very useful if you use it every year (it compares and uses the previous year's info). I also liked how it compares all the different methods of filing (whether to itemize or not, whether to file separately or together) but it also got confusing at times since I entered in my info first thinking that I would go back later to adjust some things but there is no function that I know of to keep track of things that I wanted to return to. There were also times that I wish I could see what the IRS really wanted b/c I don't think I needed to fill out all those forms (TaxCut has this function but it's not very user-friendly). I also didn't like that all the pertinent info was not transferred to the state return and we had to enter all that again. But enough of my complaints, I just wanted to warn newlyweds that you should really set aside time to do taxes together (don't wait until the week before -- see story below) or just get a really good accountant that you can trust (not my preference since I haven't found one yet and I'm not sure it's worth paying so much more for anyway; plus I feel like you really own your fiscal situation instead of being clueless about it).

So as if it weren't apparent enough, it's never good to procrastinate! Here's my tax procrastination anecdote: with the two moves in the past few months, plus the wedding and apt. renovations (leaving me in a more disoriented state than usual), and the gathering of important financial documents for the mortgage while switching jobs, I have no idea where my packet of 2005 tax forms are. I usually have one folder that holds all this information but when I searched the usual spot in my parents' house I had every year but 2005. So I reasoned that it must be at my out-laws' since that's where we were living while applying for the mortgage. I thought it was in one of my bags there but couldn't find it. I then thought my backup copy on my computer would suffice. It did, until I realized that I needed the state forms as well. Unlike the federal forms, NYS' fillable PDFs do not save the information so all I had on my computer was a blank IT-201. So what did I do at 1am on April 16 after I thought the hard part was over? I started filling out the 2005 IT-201 from scratch. I was so frustrated that I saved an image of the form that I filled out, just in case. From there, I could fill in that one field needed for this year's return. grrr! Next year I'm hoping things will be less complicated (or we'll at least get used to it) and maybe I'll get organized in time. *sigh*