I am experiencing a very odd, hollow feeling at the moment. There is a gap, a void, a hole where the need to file my income tax returns used to sit. Today I hit “send” on the e-file and sent off my federal and state returns. Within a few minutes, both had been accepted and the company with whom I’d prepared my taxes congratulated me on being finished. I must confess there was a bit of anticlimax in receiving this message. After I’d sent them off, I printed out and created file folders for the returns and for supporting documents. I was quite pleased with my organization and I felt complete as I tidied up all the papers, statements, and forms and bundled them into the files. While I am grateful to be finished, it’s going to take me a little while to come to terms with it.
After several weeks of angst and indecisiveness and fretting, I was determined that I was going to finish them this weekend, preferably today, and be ready to mail them off with whatever I could manage to pay the feds. I realized too late that I could have had my taxes prepared for me for free or at a reduced costs because I qualify as “low income.” As I had not been accustomed to thinking of myself in those terms, the idea hadn’t occurred to me. When I finally figured out that I could have used that service, I had already gone so far down the road that I decided to tough it out and finish them myself. It had been a little over a week since I’d last looked at my own taxes (I had prepared my daughter’s a few days earlier.) Last year had been an odd one for taxes. I’d earned consulting income and wages, then after being laid off, unemployment benefits. Because I’d moved, I had two home offices to figure out how to deduct. A variety of other oddities during 2011 made the tax preparation process even dicier than it had been in the past.
The scary thing about doing these oneself is that you can change one little number here or there and the result swings from owing the government to expecting a refund. That’s what happened when I recalculated my home office deductions. Originally, I had been in the hole to the government to the tune of a few hundred dollars and with a quick change of two numbers, I was above ground by nearly two hundred bucks. I found the nearly $900 swing so unnerving that I recalculated the same deduction at least three more times. The $100 plus refund remained. That is when I decided to hit “file.” Then I hemmed and hawed about whether or not to buy audit protection. After reading several reviews and opinions, I decided to bit the bullet and spend the $40 for the defense. As it the case with any other kind of insurance, you buy it hoping you won’t have to use it, and that is definitely true for me. What I do know is that no matter what happens in the months ahead, for now my taxes have been filed and I can let go of that task and its attendant anxiety.
And I did all this while still battling off this cold or whatever it is that is causing me the sneezies. I am grateful to have made it through the day and finished my taxes to boot. This leaves me with one more day in the weekend in which I can sit back and enjoy what’s supposed to be a perfectly lovely spring day. Finishing one’s taxes really is a simple gratitude, but this is one of those times in which simple is simply wonderful.
