Our tax guy is fired

[Kermit]

I got a letter from the state of South Carolina yesterday. It seems that we overpaid by $5200 for 2001! While I'm glad that we're getting that money back, I can't believe we paid someone to prepare our taxes and he did it wrong.

I will admit that part of the blame belongs to us. We should have read over the forms more carefully. However, in our defense, the guy didn't finish our taxes until about 1:00 on tax day, so we were pressed for time to sign the forms and get them to the post office. Looking over the form we got in the mail yesterday, it looks like what the guy did was "forget" that he had us pay $5000 as an estimated payment in January since DH worked from home for most of last year and didn't have any withholdings. I just wrote one really big check in January that he split up among the federal and state governments, so I didn't really know how much we had paid the state.

So needless to say, I'm getting a new tax guy for this year. We'll be able to get someone who costs a little more since we have $5000.

 

[caitycaity]

sorry your tax guy screwed up, but it's great that you got the money back!

 

[Olaf]

Originally posted by Kermit

I will admit that part of the blame belongs to us. We should have read over the forms more carefully.

My DH and I have six advanced degrees between us, and we can't understand most of those forms. Our tax laws need to be totally scrapped and simplified. It is absolutely insane.

I know what you could with the money. Maybe a visit to the Mousehouse is in order?

 

[ripleysmom]

Better that he screwed up and you get money back than he screwed up and you owe.

Sorry he screwed up though.

 

[RNMOM]

I think I was lucky. We had a teacher in senior year High School that taught "Problems of Democracy". Not only did we learn about the government but he taught us to handle checking accounts and to do tax returns. I have used a person only once a couple years ago when we had a good sized inheretence that came from both taxed and untaxed sources. It was pretty complicated and we ended up paying a lot that year.

The tax software is quite easy to use also. DH thinks it will do a better job. I honestly can sit down and do the forms pretty quickly and the wording on the software gets me confused at times. We do the short form first so we have some idea what our tax would be and then I do the long form. We own our house so it is always in our advantage to do the long form.

The year we took the taxes to the accountant he took the forms I had already done and basically copied them on his. He had one or two tweaks. Money well spent?? At least it was deductable the following year.

Don't be afraid of those forms. I am all for a flat tax and simplification of the forms but I can deal with it until we elect the right people to institute it.

 

[Kermit]

We do normally do our own taxes, but last year DH worked from home for about 9 months. We'd have never known about all the possible deductions if we'd done them ourselves, and we may have even ended up in prison for taking ones we didn't qualify for. I used to think it was silly that people who worked from home got all those deductions, but now I realize how much it really costs to work from home.