Story of the Day 3/ 5/ 2014

I can sleep , at night.

That is because I have finished doing our taxes.
Our is a very plural term.
I do my husband's and mine- we file jointly. It kind of goes with being married, at least, if you are like us and not wealthy .
And I do the forms and file them for our two youngest children.
I do not do it for my oldest; his fiancé does.
I liked the fiancé quite a bit, when I met him.
And I have decided that I like him a whole lot more, now that I know he can do taxes.
This might end up being very beneficial relationship....if I can sucker him into doing the rest of the family's......

But back to the current year.

I finished doing our taxes, and I e-filed them. the federal part, because that was free.
I did not e-file the 4 state forms .
Please explain why I would pay $20 ( okay, $19.95) each to file forms when the refund ranges between $0 and $7?
That is somewhat like spending $14 on gasoline to drive to the store that is halfway across the city because the canned cream of corn, and only the canned cream of corn, is 10 cents cheaper.

But Turbo Tax thinks that I should.
Not drive to buy the cheaper canned cream of corn, which I don't' eat.
But to pay to file my state taxes.
They asked me that several times.

And they also asked if I wanted their $45 service for each, in case we are audited by the IRS.

Okay, my husband and I might find that painful.
We have, in the past, when I was the victim of identity theft.
But I can't imagine the IRS is at all interested in auditing my daughter, whose income, last year, was a whopping $47.
Or my son, whose was $7.25 an hour, for part-time work.
I forget his total earnings, but he is too poor to bother with, if you are the IRS.

I had a few moments of vacillating. Should I pay this fee for this for mine? ( mine being the joint filing for my husband and me.)

We have been contacted by the IRS.
Repeated letters and notices.
This is from when my identity was stollen by someone at my previous employer.
And the person who stole my identity used it to get money from them, money which I didn't know about and for which I was later assessed for not having paid taxes.
This was when the IRS contacted me. A series of not very friendly missives.

I thought about what TurboTx offers.
They would deal directly with the IRS.
This sounded very good , until I thought about it.
Because, gee, that wasn't the problem.
The problem was my ex-employer.

It required letters from a lawyer to get corrected a 1099.
Actually, not a corrected one, because they never sent that, but an uncorrected one.
The one they mailed to whatever the new address was that they had for me- the one provided by their person who used my Social security number to steal.

That person had the 1099 sent to some other address, delaying when their scheme would be found out.
And confusing me, further, since I was being held accountable for something I had no idea had happened.

In fact, the judge for the tax hearing- the IRS judge- was nice and helpful ..... kind of ruining my previously held image of what the IRS is like.
And Turbo Tax probably would not have taken my case that far.
They would not even have contacted my ex-employer to get a 1099- one that stated how much was stolen using my identity, and then corrected one to give to the IRS.
Those things don't' seem to fit under what they provide for the $45 fee.
All they would do was take calls from the IRS, which was the only easy part of what happened.

So, I decided to lead a risky life and did not pay the $45.
You know, me and my wild lifestyle.

Tomorrow, I might even wear mis-matched socks.