Taxes suck! Naked French girls rock!
You don’t even want to think about trying to navigate state tax forms if you haven’t been a full time resident during the taxable year. You’d think they’d want to make it easer, to entice people to cross state lines. Alas no.
So the good news is, I’m pretty darn sure there was some error in my W2s that inflated my gross income (minus 401k) by more than $6000. Assuming my last pay stub was an accurate reflection of my actual year to date gross pay, I should be getting back about $30 from Uncle George’s war machine. Which is so very different than owing $1500 as I had thought last night—let alone having to drastically increase my federal deductions for the rest of the year.
The 1040 form seemed pretty annoying until I started navigating the fiery waters of the California NR forms. I think I’ve heard advice that you should enlist the help of a tax preparer after moving between states. But that would be like admitting defeat!
What makes me angry is that this is a total waste of my time. I could be contributing to the economy of the state or relaxing so that I could contribute to the economy of the state tomorrow or just thinking creative thoughts. Instead I’m crossing my eyes at a sadistic form called Schedule CA (540NR) that looks like this (which a computer should have already filled out for me!):
And that’s only the first page!
As you can see, I’d rather take screenshots of my tax forms than waste mental energy trying to decipher out what number goes in line 11 column D. And since when did Adobe Acrobat’s reader become such a crappy interface for reading PDFs? I swear to god if I drag with the hand tool and it jumps back to the previous page one more time…! I hate to say it, but I’m going to have to pick up some bonafide paper forms and instructions from the library tomorrow.
Now for something completely different
In other news, girls in France have been loosening their necklines in solidarity with Delacroix’s Marianne (via boingboing) to protest a labor law called the CPE which I think is totally hot. The topless protesters, not the labor law.
Well, apparently it worked. Jacques Chirac has withdrawn the CPE and decided to go back to the drawing board. Go French chicas!
Ha! You should have seen me the year that Betsy and I moved to NC. That year, I had THREE different state taxes to fill out, MD, OH, and NC. Plus Federal. For both of us, since we weren’t married yet.
Yep…EIGHT freakin’ tax forms to do that year. I still sometimes wake at night screaming.