I got up this morning and went straight away to finalizing my taxes. Hey, I’m 3 days early! I use Turbo Tax Home&Business. After almost five hours I am done.
I’ve been working on my taxes since February. I’ve probably invested a total of 15 hours on this year’s taxes. This includes reading several IRS online documents… skimming about 50 pages and reading about 10 pages in depth… sometimes re-reading many times. And this includes doing other online research. I find, however, that the IRS documents are more helpful than much of the drek I come across online. They are also really boring!
This year (2008 tax year) I have the full straight of schedules: A, B, C, and D. The filed forms for federal amount to 11 pages. There are 8 additional pages of worksheets.
By getting done a bit before April 15, I had time to calculate my allowable 2008 Roth IRA contribution. Unfortunately, I only get a portion of the $5000 2008 limit (for folks under 50). Once calculated I simply made the Roth IRA investment online. [Its not too late, you can still make contributions for 2008 up through April 15th! ]
I’m also carrying forward a capital loss. It’s a bummer that loss offsets against income are still maxed at $3000/year. Congress, how about some inflation adjustment on this number? It should be upped to at least $5000 in my opinion.
I don’t hate doing taxes, but they sure are a big pain and hassle. Hey, at least they are done for this year. Best wishes to those of you who are rushing to file. And to all taxpayers, my sympathy.
Balhiser.com 