Hm, well, I got it in the mail last year (at my current job). I just hope I get it soon.
I only JUST received mine…I’m still waiting on interest income, investments and such…
I never know if I have all the paperwork I need, so I always wait until the end of March before filing.
I did mine last week. I had to go to H&R because of the HSA I had at my first job last year. I had no clue how to include it. I was due to get about $40 back from state and federal (each).
Today, I get a revised W2 from my first job of the year because they screwed up how they reported the HSA contributions. I also got one for a job I had for one day. I didn’t get paid for that day. I didn’t file tax paperwork. I didn’t even give them a copy of my license. But, now I have to file for $45 which I never received. Apparently, the owner filed my tax papers for me (I never even signed them) and without proof of identity and without ever paying me.
So, I now will have to pay H&R again to fix my paperwork. I’m sure the fee will be more than the money I was supposed to get back and the added W2 and the screwed up W2 will probably cause me to lose the returns anyway.
Pissed off doesn’t even begin to describe how I’m feeling right now.
I’ve got to deal with 4 W-2s (no capital gains or losses for a change) and filing in two different states besides the federal filing. And I need to talk with my dad to see if we come out better as a whole with them taking me as a dependent for one more year (which they could do) or me being able to take the personal exemption and the tuition deduction. But after that, I can just zip through the taxes (though I’m gonna take some time and see if I can get all my money back from Pennsylvania since I was never a resident.)
Well, I didn’t get quite as much back as I hoped, about 800. Which is better than nothing - until I remembered it was my own damned money. I think I saw the word “intaxication” coined to describe that sensation of “WHOOP… oh yeah.”
Yeah, it seems good until you look at the amount you paid!
This year I used H&R Block’s online service again and had a heck of a time getting an ‘error’ message to realize it wasn’t really an error. The problem is there is no way to override the message and file even though I was 100% sure there was no error. I even had a ‘live online chat’ with a rep (after waiting in line for about an hour) and she was…less than helpful. It was plain she was typing from a script and had no idea what I was talking about. I should have saved our messages because they were actually kind of humorous (now that the problem is over, anyway!) Finally her ‘solution’ was to delete all my W-2 info and start over. It worked, but that’s not really a great way of correcting an error (that wasn’t there to begin with!)
The problem with doing the taxes online like that is you can’t see how they are coming up with the figures they do. Sure it is fast and easy but I was suspicious that they were figuring my child care expenses wrong since they didn’t ask me qualifying questions I thought they needed. I couldn’t find out for sure until I could print out my forms, and I couldn’t do that until I had paid and was ready to file. I understand that they don’t want you to use their website to prepare your file and then just copy the info and file yourself for free, but I wish there was some way to see what forms and schedules they are using so I could kind of follow along. Some of the directions they give are not as clear as they should be and I wanted to double-check that they had all my info the way it needed to be, but to do that I needed to see how they had done their figuring.
Still didn’t get it. Grr. OTOH, I did get my medical clearance for the Peace Corps, something that I’ve been working on for almost a freaking year, so I’m in a good mood anyway.
Anyone out there know much about taxes? I volunteer at the Field Museum and every January they send me a little form totalling up how many hours I spent there in the previous year. I did my taxes on taxactonline.com last year and I couldn’t figure out where/if I was supposed to report that. Can I get some kind of deduction for volunteer work? If not, why does the museum send me this and get my hopes up?
I’m far from being an expert, but I do know a fair amount about taxes. If you itemize deductions, you can deduct charitable contributions, but you can’t deduct the value of your time or your services. If you incurred expenses while volunteering, you can deduct those - anything you bought to use in your volunteer work or supplies you donated to the museum, for instance. If you used your own car in the course of volunteering, you can deduct 14 cents a mile. However, I believe this doesn’t include travel between your home and the museum. More information is available from the IRS official site.
I can’t guess why the museum would send you a form like that, except that some businesses give their employees some kind of credit for time spent on volunteer work.
[hijack]My brother-in-law has been a docent at the Field Museum forever. I’ll bet you know him![/hijack]
My refund is almost 4X what I actually paid in taxes. Gotta love America.
Congrats on your medical clearance!
That form may be for people whose employers give them credit for volunteering. I’ve never had an employer that nice, but I’m sure others do.
Robin
Thanks for the info, guys.
InternetLegend, I may know your b-i-l! But likely only if he’s a dinosaur docent like me. I don’t really know any of the docents for the rest of the museum.