Tax Time

Well, I finally filed my taxes. I hate this time of year. I don't mind paying my fair share, but it just seems my fair share gets less fair every year. I never get any money "back" from the IRS, but I don't mind that. I hate the thought of giving the government an interest free loan. I just wish I could get the amount down a little bit.

I have been a Turbo Tax customer since back in the 90's and it's relatively simple. I don't have any major complications in my return, so I think this is a pretty simple system. Early on, I thought I might have 'professional' do my taxes, and I found that Turbo Tax actually did a better job. So, I'm happy with it, although the e-filing fees seem to be getting a little high. I have to file a federal and two state returns (I live in one state, but make all my income in another). All told, it cost me about 55 bucks just to file...plus of course the cost of the program. Still, though, it's under $100 bucks and I don't think I could find a service to prepare all three for double that.

No sooner do I file than I see this story about the weakness of the IRS computer system. This kind of freaks me out, since in the past few years, I have had someone, somehow, get hold of my credit card number. Nothing really bad came out of it for me, but the bank got tagged. I have to say that Wells Fargo has been a great bank to work with. The first time, someone decided to do some "offshore" gambling with my money. It was a Sunday morning and the bank called me, because they saw some weird activity on my card. Luckily, by the time this scumbag had spent about 1100 dollars of my money, we had the account closed. But this only took about an hour and it was quite scary.

Now I see the story of the IRS computers and I get nervous. With all the information the IRS has on taxpayers (ss#, address, bank account numbers, etc) this is really frightening.
But I paid 'em and will just have to deal with it.

So, I guess I'll ingore this whole process for another year.