Yes, today I am THAT person. The one who didn’t file early. The one who didn’t pull her papers together. Heck, my papers would be lucky to have a cardboard box. Nope, not my papers. They’re in loosely grouped piles all over the dining room table. Every time I get to a new section of the filing requirements, I have to go on a mad search in the “likely” places to try and find them.
Why? Why am I this person?
Is there anyone else out there in my boat? It would feel better not to be alone in my misery.
PS (Oh - I forgot to cover the how. 1. I can procrastinate like a pro. If there’s a job that pays for procrastination, someone please let me know. 2. This past year I became disabled, I have an autistic son, my daughter was also diagnosed with autism, and my husband is also having medical issues. So, fine, there are reasons, but I’m still a screw up). :smack:
PPS - my cat is pissed at me. I had to move her off of my chair in order to make room for this chaos. Retribution is coming…
Well, I vow each year to do my taxes early but never do. I dropped them in the mail this afternoon, having finished them yesterday.
But now I have good reason. Since the ACA I’m less out of pocket for health insurance, effectively raising my taxable income, and this year, for almost the first time since I became an adult, I had to pay the federal government. And the state! So even if I finish early, I won’t mail them until the deadline, because I won’t give Uncle Sam anything until I have to.
They say it take a long time to get a refund, what do you want to bet that my check will be cashed by the end of the week?
One thing I like about using electronic filing: even though I owed, I was given the opportunity to select the date on which my payment would be debited from my account. So I could file my taxes early, but still not pay until the deadline.
So I’m listening to the radio and hear: “It’s tax day”. I think to myself, maybe mutter under my breath: “No, that was a few days ago.” I told them, huh?
Since when isn’t tax deadline day the 15th? Now I’m starting to question everything that I thought I knew.
It isn’t the 15th if the 15th is a Friday. (The District of Columbia has a holiday on the 16th, and when that’s a Saturday the holiday is observed on Friday.)
I’ve never aimed for a refund; typically, I plan to end up owing just a little. I’d rather get the float on the money (what little it is) than get back a lump sum. Consequently, filing early wasn’t particularly advantageous. Being an admitted procrastinator, I usually waited to the last minute to file.
I’m actually getting a little back this year, so filing early would have been better, but I still didn’t get around to it until Friday.
I did it. Federal and two states. Owed the Uncle, and refunds elsewhere. Could have been worse.
I still don’t know why I wait so long. I think it’s just because it’s so freakin’ painful just to get the information pulled together, entered into a plethora of forms, and filed.
I love doing taxes - love them. This year was a procrastination year - it was mid-March before I got them done. I have depression and anxiety - and money is one of the triggers and this year has been BAD, so I had to get fairly stable and beg some Ativan from my doctor - just in case I owed.
For me, there aren’t a lot of piles of paper. Anything labeled “important tax information” that starts arriving in January gets thrown into a basket for the purpose. There is a little internet research (what were my property taxes? How much did it cost for the car tabs this year?) Year long deductions (chartables) get entered into a spreadsheet as we go.
Came here to ask if that was the case there (as well as in Canada).
I haven’t filed since 2013, so I need to get my rear in gear. Started last month, and had an amusing series of calls as I attempted to find out what year I’d last filed, when to give me any information over the phone they required information from my last filing. :smack:
It was 11:54 PM when I completed e-filing through TurboTax. Yeah, I’m THAT person too.
What makes it especially dumb is:
I had the majority of the information by mid-February
The few pieces I needed were things I could easily look up online
I’m not a tax accountant, but I literally learned it all from my mother growing up (she WAS - and while I’m no pro, I’m more than capable of doing our own taxes)
We were due an insanely large refund.
The refund is annoying because every time we try to jigger our withholding to be more in line with the taxes, we somehow wind up underpaying - sometimes enough to trigger a penalty. And this is with using the IRS’s calculator, and putting in what turns out to be pretty accurate numbers. Argh.
On the plus side: I helped both kids do their taxes (my son is not a dependant this year, boo). They got all their money back. My son even got MORE back because of an educational credit. And both kids set aside money in their IRAs as ordered.
I also got a really large refund. We run a business now, so I’m paying estimated quarterly, and I haven’t gotten good at it yet - nor even a feel for how it will balance out. Plus I can never really remember how much stock I’ve sold, and I’ve gotten caught a few times there. Then we overspent in December…hence the procrastination and need for Ativan - only to have the whole “not only do I not have to pay in, but I’m getting a lot of money back!” realization.
So this year I’m purposely overpaying quarterlies. Yes, the government can hold my money interest free…its worth it for me to not have the anxiety and actually enjoy pulling the paperwork together.
I think what I like about it is it is pulling a lot of disparate data together quickly and getting a result. TurboTax makes it easy, but I even liked it back when I was doubling checking the numbers I put into the calculator.
(Oh, and I can’t believe your kids are actually grownups now! I have Dweezil in my brain as about eleven years old. I helped my seventeen year old file his first taxes this year)
If it makes you feel any better, I did my own taxes in February but I am also responsible for doing the taxes for trusts for my niece and nephews and I, like, totally forgot about it until last week. And this is the year when I realized that maybe I’ve been doing it wrong all along and eeek crap I don’t even know panic time argh (finally I just sent it in, because if anything I’m overpaying.)
And THEN the financial manager, for the first time ever, didn’t get the checks for the taxes sent out to me so I had to scramble to personally cover them. It’s a cluster of fuck. I had to walk down to the post office and mail envelopes personally yesterday afternoon.
I used to file my taxes pretty early. These days we always owe a ton of money, so I’m less motivated to do so. Now I usually do all the work early (make sure I have all the documents, fill in the details on the TurboTax site, etc). Then I have a month or two to stare at the amount owed and let the resignation flow over me.
Then I actually hit the filing button a few days before the deadline.
