Yesterday afternoon I was again very tired, but I knew that we would have to work on and finish taxes. The first question was whether or not Chris had had a chance to work on tabulating any of the receipts and such that I had laid out for him the night before. He said he had totaled the childcare. That was good. He didn't know what to do about the medical. It is more complicated than most parts. I asked if he had entered any of the 1099s or anything. He said he didn't enter anything into the program, just totaled things otherwise.
I finally forced myself downstairs to start working on it all. I first entered the childcare, since that is one of the first things in the forms. Then I did the 1099s, which weren't obvious, since some of them were new. These things went in smoothly and quickly. Then it was dinner time and a good time for a break.
After dinner, I dragged myself downstairs again. The medical was still waiting. I needed Chris's help to do the subtotaling. So, I put that off until after the kids were in bed. I finished up everything else I could do. We put the kids to bed and then tackled the medical expenses. Everything needed to be subtotaled, and then mileage needed to be calculated. This is always a royal pain, and there is no guarantee that all your effort will result in any deduction whatsoever. We slogged through it and I was getting more and more tired. I started snapping and Chris complained and snapped back that discussing it was delaying our completion even further. We went back and forth a couple of times and then refocused on the real task at hand. We finally got through it and called my mom. I asked for her to run me through her usual list of questions to be sure that we got all of them. We did. We had to figure out how to correct the childcare issue that the IRS complained about for 2008. We rummaged around and finally found it in the worksheet where the W-2 information is entered. Oddly enough, I specifically remember entering the correct numbers there for the dependent care FSA, but when I looked again, the appropriate line was empty. Now, I suspect that the software yanked it off the line. I remember being very careful when I entered all the W-2 information, because of our previous problems with this. Now the line was blank. I now have to make a mental note to enter it on this worksheet when entering the W-2 information ***and*** again after everything else is entered! This really is unacceptable. The software should be smarter than this. We still have to straighten out the 2008 childcare issue, which entails giving the IRS more money, plus interest.
Finally, we paid with Chris's debit card and we were printing. I begged off and headed for bed. Chris stayed behind and babysat the printer. When I got up this morning, the printouts were lying very tidy on his desk. W-2's were not attached, but everything was neat and tidy. No extraneous papers, failed printouts, receipts, reports, or anything. Nice. I signed both the federal and the state forms after I ate breakfast. Chris would still have to attach the W-2s from STScI and Hargrove and do the mailing, but I figured he could handle that without me telling him what to do. He did call me at work during the morning, to ask if we had any 5x7 envelopes. No. We've never had a bunch of those. We've only ever had the standard number 10 business envelopes and the large 10x12 manilla envelopes. Clearly, he was getting ready to pack up the forms and mail them. Hurray!
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