Monday, January 30, 2006

A taxing weekend

Didn't get any writing done over the weekend... at least, not any writing that I enjoyed. I got my W2 form in last week, and so Saturday and Sunday were dedicated to Uncle Sam and his buddies running things over at the IRS. The entire affair was akin to a long, tedious bout of trench warfare. The good news is that by being a lowly writer of marginal success, I've somehow avoided all the higher tax brackets and have a significant amount of dollars coming back to me in the form of a refund check. Yay!

One thing baffles me, though. If the IRS is so keen on getting everyone to submit their taxes online, why then don't they make available a simple electronic fill-in-the-blank form for all the schedules and forms? Why do they leave it to TurboTax, H&R Block and the rest? The patronizing Q&A format is infuriating and counterproductive if, like us, you have multiple schedules to file that don't necessarily fit in one-size-fits-all pigeonholes. Lisa thought I was being a Luddite, I suspect, because of my disdain for the commercial electronic filing systems available. But after spending all evening online, she came away with as much contempt for them as I. It just boggles my mind how they've managed to take something that should be simple and straightforward, and made it complex and exasperating. Only in America...

Now Playing: Clannad Clannad 1

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