I don't think I'm someone who gets stressed out easily. Maybe people who know me will contradict this, but I think they'll agree. I tend to be--I try to be--I prefer to be--the calm one, even to the point that it seems to make other people more stressed out.
But dah-hamn, did taxes do it to me yesterday. Or maybe it wasn't taxes so much as the software I was trying to use. My taxes weren't even very complicated, even though I'm paying state income tax again for the first time in a few years, but somewhere around the third time I tried to get the pdfs to open so I could print them, by brain just seized up. I would have liked to open a crack in my head and shoot burning steam at my incompetent computer, to boil the internet and with it all the cumbersome tax programs and not-obviously-necessary Javascripts. Overall and in an objective sense, this might have been my least stressful tax season since college.
Maybe not though. I also had the opportunity, as an independent contractor, to figure out quarterly estimated tax payments. It turns out I am not enough of an optimist to pay any estimated income tax this quarter. We will see what the future brings.
I use freefilefillableforms.com for federal stuff, and cross-reference that against TurboTax (since you don't have to pay for that if you don't file).
ReplyDeleteYou could probably do something similar for state taxes? (Do states have e-file? I suspect they would).
I think both TurboTax and H&R Block allow you to file for free if you're under a certain income, and both will take you through the state taxes. Make copious notes for next year; it will make the process so much easier.
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