Moving on to bigger and better things. I think Old Man Winter is finally done taking his wrath out on us up here in the north. The sun is shining a little more. The birds are chirping and building nests. Leaves are starting to pop.
And I finished the taxes last weekend. Now that was a bit of a chore. I had actually started the process several weeks back. I started cleaning my basement office, organizing the stacks of papers and bills that had made their way down there from the past year. These were quite literally stacks, some of which had fallen over, some of which were actually left from the previous year waiting to be boxed away. But I did it. I was successful. I went through each and every pile and sorted and organized and filed things appropriately.

Then it was finally on to the taxes. My plan was to first download the fillable pdf forms and do a quick once over just to refresh my memory and see what my initial bottom line might be. Michigan state forms cannot be saved after they are filled. I can't figure the sense in that, but knew that I would more than likely make copies of everything anyways.

So off I went, calculating away. A few hours here. A few hours there. Getting into the groove. First pass at the fillable forms left me with a sizable refund. Good. Now the second step in my plan was to plug the same information into Turbo Tax. We qualified for the free edition this year, as well as last year, so I figured I would put it to good use. Enter my info and see what I missed, if anything. And I had actually found my login and password from last year's Turbo Tax return.

Well, to my disappointment, I needed to re-enter all of our information. Strike 1. So many questions. So many questions. What do they mean by that? I'll answer yes here, thinking I should be able to go back at some point and change my answer if it's wrong. It's really hard to go back. After completing so many questions and answers, I found that navigating back to a specific point was extremely difficult. The site gave a list of subjects classified by earnings, additions, subtractions, deductions, etc. And even after clicking on all of what I thought the obvious subjects were that may pertain the the answer I had wanted to change, I was left baffled at not being able to find it again. Strike 2. I moved on. I was then at the point of finalizing the return, checking for errors, making corrections. Turbo Tax was a pal when it came to pointing out the possible error, but was horrendous at getting me back to the point where I could actually fix it. This made me nervous. If I complete a form, believing it to be correct, then I'm okay. Right. However, if an actual tax calculating system tells me there are errors, which I cannot find, and I still choose to submit, then I wouldn't be able to sleep peacefully for the next seven years.

After making the decision to move forward, just to see what the outcome might possibly be, Turbo Tax then tells me that it cannot e-file my return do to the errors.  On a positive note, Turbo Tax was still willing to file my State return. Um, no thanks. My refunds via Turbo Tax were both, federal and state, lower than what I had originally calculated on the fillable forms. Strike 3.

My third and final option was to use the free e-file forms through the IRS website. I again started at the beginning, completing all necessary information and copied over a lot of what I had calculated before on the fillable forms, in addition to a few items that Turbo Tax had brought up that I hadn't thought about before. I found this particular site to be of much more assistance than Turbo Tax, much easier to navigate. I could see the form I wanted to see, along with it's instructions, at just a click. All of my work was saved immediately. Things were looking up. At the end I felt confident and my refund was not as sizable as the first go 'round, but larger that what Turbo Tax had calculated for me. I was happy.

However.... when finalizing and preparing to finally e-file, again I was stopped by errors. This time, though, I was told specifically what the error was. The error was that there was more than one of the forms 2106. Well, of course there is, silly. And I cannot believe that this is an "error". Form 2106: Employee Business Expenses. I had deductions for uniforms that I paid for. Spouse had deductions for at least two of his jobs. How is this possibly an error? Bottom line: I couldn't e-file due to this anomaly. I was forced to print each form and attached schedule - after, of course, going over each one, one more time.

After finding the addresses needed to send my paper returns to the IRS and the Michigan State Treasury, getting the returns signed and dated, packaging them neatly into their oversized envelopes and mailing them out on Monday (one day before they were technically due) I then realized that I, in fact, had not remembered to make copies of the returns. I have all of the federal forms saved to my computer, because, if you remember, you could fill those out and save them. But the state forms... gone forever. I have my many draft copies, done in pencil, then written over in pen, then written over in red ink... but final copies? Sent to the Treasury. I hope they don't get lost in the mail.