Tax Season

Ok, so I got an email this morning from Turbo Tax reminding me, again, that it was tax season. As an incentive, they were offering limited-time deep discounts on their service, too. Since my W-2 was sitting on my nightstand, along with the only other two other year-end forms I got for 2007, I figured it was time to go ahead and file.

Normally, I try to make it where I owe about $100 or so every year, just because I'd rather have my money in hand than giving the gub-mint an interest-free loan. But these past few years it hasn't mattered much, and last year when I found out about my underpayment of 2001, thereby immediately putting me in debt to the IRS to the tune of about $1300, well, I just didn't care anymore. I figured if I got any type of refund would be swallowed up. I've been diligently paying it down, along with my student loans, in the hopes that someday the federal government would get off my back.

Anyhow, as you're filing your taxes on Turbo Tax, they have a little meter at the top of the page that shows your current refund amount at any point in the process. It was sitting at $172 for most of the morning, but as I delved deeper into the questions and deductions, it started clocking over like like the Mach meter on the Concorde. By the time I was done, my refund was all the way up to $690! Woo hoo!

Of course, the chances of seeing any of that are slim to none, because they'll apply it to what I still owe from days past, but guess what--that's one less expense I have to deal with. And with this $600 credit/economic stimulus/vote bribe thing they're passing out, I might actually get a check from Uncle Sam for the first time in almost a decade.

Ooh, and it turns out that I got to file for free. No fees this year. Thank you, TurboTax.



Mikey