One Good Reason to Overthrow the Government

Taxes.

I know, I know. Most people, those of you who have been doing taxes all your life, don't want to hear about it. I don't want to talk about it, either. And I especially don't want to hear about it.

We've never done taxes before. So, naturally, the whole thing was daunting. Add to that the fact that in 2007 we opened our own business (which I was determined to make legal, so that we could participate in shows and order from wholesalers). Then add to that the fact that Samantha has some kind of magical write off for spending money on school related things out of a specific magical fund. I call these things magical not out of cynicism or jest, but simply because, despite all my best efforts, I don't understand how they work. I just finished China Men tonight and have decided that mysticism, honestly, may be the only answer for some things; so they are magic.

My Dad gave me this advice: "I'd just wave my hand and pretend you started in 2008." He meant the business. But it's kind of obvious when I started it. I applied for a Federal Employer Identification Number and for a license from the State of Ohio. The one thing I don't need is for the IRS to show up and land me with an audit; my paperwork is hardly in order. So I filed the business papers, or at least what I assumed to be the business papers. This was all done with TurboTax which, contrary to popular belief, does not make taxes easy. Undoubtedly it makes them easier, but not easy.

I won't go into too much detail about Sam's school expenses. We made at least 3 phone calls to ask her Dad about the information we needed. He's one of those people who doesn't read numbers correctly, straight from Kevin James' standup. The best I can figure, he was feeding me numbers with decimals without my knowledge. However it happened TurboTax was showing that we owed the IRS upwards of $80,000. Which couldn't have been right. Sam ended up going through it line by line with him and, since they have the same numberspeak, was able to input the right numbers.

Like I said, I don't want to talk about taxes. But I also don't like the last post about going to Pittsburgh (which I posted because I didn't like the post before that, either). So, I'll have to post something in the next week to replace this post, and the next week to replace that post. It's like sweeping the dirt under the carpet, except I'm sweeping dirt under more dirt.