Thursday, August 04, 2005

IRS

Yesterday, after getting home from work and getting ready to start working on the car, we checked the mail, and found a lovely letter from the IRS.

Seems we made a mistake on our 2003 taxes. And after doing to looking and talking to the IRS on the phone, we found the mistake. So, the $1204 mistake is currently close to $1300 after interest and penalties.

First, If I owe money, I really don't mind paying it, but 2 years later? My refund I got that year has long been spent. (I still would have had a refund that year, just not as large). Now, I have to come up with $1300. *sigh*

Second. For the last several years, I have been using TaxSlayer to do my taxes. I believe this was the first return that I had used them for. I had always used TurboTax in the years previous, but had switched to TaxSlayer because my refund was much larger. The first year, TaxSlayer was not as easy to use as TurboTax had been, but the difference in returns made it worth my time. Last year, I noticed that TaxSlayer now had a wizard to walk you through a series of questions like TurboTax had. I initially thought that the fault was TaxSlayers. I had cashed in a 401 K after I had been laid-off, and this was dealing with taxes associated with that. Seems that when I put the amount of taxes withheld on that in one place, well, it also needed to go somewhere else (line 59 if I remember correctly). Since there was no wizard, I probably missed putting that amount in the second spot.

Even though it might have been my fault, I'm not sure if I'll use them next year or not.

Oh and if anyone wishes to send me $1300, I won't complain. :)

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