The Money Eeeee

I got my paperwork together (the spiders are sad) and drove to my tax preparer's office in the other metro area that's close to my place.  I'm glad I can hug my tax preparer.  It helps to offset the inhumanity of it all.

We were so optimistic, too.  She had a four hour block and I mistook her to mean that she scheduled me for all of it.  We laughed about that, and then I told her I'd take the first hour.  

It ended up taking the whole four hours.  Good thing she didn't make any new appointments behind me.  Mr. and Mrs. Seven O'Clock were ten minutes early, and I'd just stood up to get my hug.

We went over oooooodles of forms.  Last week I picked up a bunch at the library for research, and if I got to it, an estimate.  I didn't get to it, which is just as well.  It would have been a totally worthless estimate.  I needed forms that they didn't have at the library.  I needed forms that my tax preparer, who's been working in the biz for twenty years, has never used.  

She had the patience of a saint.  I had the endurance of a writer accustomed to sitting in front of a computer screen and mucking back and forth over multiple pages until the whole looks just right.  We didn't seal the deal, though.  Although she had happy tags all over the diagnostics, she decided it would be best if the form got a thorough review before she shipped it off.  My form fees at work.  Thank you!!  (If you need tax preparation due to special circumstances, unusual forms, multiple forms of income with weird rules that don't apply to normal businesses or that come from overseas, and so forth, and you happen to live in the Portland/Metro area in the Pac NW, pipe up in comments and I'll give you contact info.)  

If I'd tried to do this myself, it would have taken days, and on top of that, it would have been wrong.  Dead wrong.  Wrong as in I'd have some interesting mail later on letting me know that no, I can't file the stuff that way.  As we worked through various permutations, I variously owed the government lots of money, ended up with a windfall, owed on state and not federal, and had magically disappearing itemizations that popped up again and then re-disappeared.

I learned lots of fascinating (actually, dreary and depressing) facts about tax law.  And I got to surf the internets for a little bit.  Meanwhile, outside a thunderstorm shook the city and hard winds yanked at the door.  Hail bounced on pavement and rapped on cars and windows.

The country code for Bermuda is BD.  We had to know this to complete the form.  Seriously.  Thank you, Google.  Remember the bad ol' days when you'd have to call a tax office or the post office (of course back then you'd get an actual human being) and ask them nicely, so, what does BD stand for?  BTW, my first guess was Barbados.  Wrong!  That's BB.  She guessed British something.  

All complaints are processed through BD, British Damnation.  Include a fireproof SASE.

Meanwhile, I bet my readers are all done with their taxes.  I'd envy you, but I'm too tired, and besides, my cat keeps licking my hand and purring madly so it's hard to feel any sort of negative emotions.  The kitteh has licked most of them off.  

Home stretch now.  And then, finally, we'll be done with the Money Eeeeeee!  Two weeks after that (on average) we'll have an automatic deposit, which we'll stash in case the sky falls.