IRS Blues

[sabotlours]

The other day I got a letter in the mail from the IRS. That's never a good thing. As I opened it up I wondered how I had screwed up. Maybe it was just a few bucks. Nope. Instead of getting a small refund I now owed almost $3000. WTF?!?! I knew the only place I could have really screwed up was in a worksheet I had to do using paper and pencil. I glanced at the work that I had done and immediately realized that I had screwed up very badly. I don't recall being THAT drunk when I did the numbers. Of course all of this made the sleep study the other night so much better because I had numbers rolling around my brain while I tried to sleep.

Yesterday I stared at the worksheet that I had to fill out and realized that a good check would be if I could put it in a spreadsheet. The calculations and logic statements were easy enough. Why not give it a shot? In less than an hour I had a functioning spreadsheet that covered all 44 lines of calculations needed. I plugged in a few numbers and in a few seconds I saw that I did indeed owe $2,716. I then rechecked the IRS letter, and to my amazement saw that they were requesting payment of $2,716. So my numbers were correct, but more importantly I was proud of myself for having the skills to develop a digital solution in such a short period of time. It then made me furious to think that if little ol' me with little computing skills could do this, why the hell couldn't a programmer working for the IRS write the code to provide this simple solution to all taxpayers?!? The numbers I had to hand-enter could easily be imported from other IRS forms already filled out. The tax computations could easily be handled by simple lookup tables. In other words the entire thing could be automated with some very simple programming. It also shows that the IRS is fully capable of filling out your taxes for you. But as I have written here in the past, any efforts to automate the process usually get shot down in Congress thanks to lobbying by Intuit, H&R Block, and CPAs. That's why I'm loathe to have a professional do mine since the math involved is not that difficult. And now I have my spreadsheet to help me in next year's endeavors. That will help immensely!

Comments

[albear.livejournal.com]

Oh man! What a bummer and a shyte filled nappy! I have also freaked out getting letters from the IRS but they turned to be not so unimportant as to owe money. I've been using the very same tax accountant/preparer since 1992 And Dex and I together since 2005 and have never had troubles. Yeah, I see you don't like them.

Maybe you did so well on your investments last year that the blood money sucking IRS got your attention?

[sabotlours.livejournal.com]

There's a much more simple explanation. When a stock pays a dividend, no taxes are taken out. So even though I might have enough taken out from my paycheck to cover my salary, it doesn't cover what I earned in investments. So the devil is due his reward. This year's screw up was totally on me. Of course I was j/k when I said I was drunk, but the mistake was so blatant it looked like I must have been. Senior moment? But I am proud of my spreadsheet. It is largely a whole series of if/then statement that mimics the IRS worksheet almost perfectly. It pisses me off that such an important worksheet is not handled better by the IRS. It's probably because dividends are taxed at a lower rate, so using the worksheet allows you to pay less tax.

[procyonid.livejournal.com]

And of course, in every other country the tax agency does just that - sends you a bill, and if you have extra income or deductions there's a website you can go to to enter them for a quickly-recalculated figure.

Apparently tax-preparer lobbying isn't the *only* reason for the mess; the tax code is also just very complicated compared to other countries with all the incentives and deductions for this and that (even if they don't apply to most people). Still, it is a mess, and taxes have taken up an entire day of my life for most of the past few years because of my foreign residency. (And of course the GOP didn't fix any of this with their supposedly once-in-a-generation tax overhaul bill.)

[c-eagle.livejournal.com]

Exactly! All the stuff still needs to be entered! Now it's just a LOT more blank pages/paper with the new Schedules 1 thru 6 !
;p

[mondhasen.livejournal.com]

Best return I never got was due to a misplaced decimal. I caught it when rechecking my supposed windfall at the end.

Nice job on the programming. I still use the store bought versions.

[c-eagle.livejournal.com]

Yeah, this is part of why I don't overly like the current electronic solutions.... because the GUI is soooooo disconnected from the actual forms, AND, they don't have these worksheets electronic (I think that's what you are saying also)...

Interesting they caught it so fast though.... they found a mistake on mine from almost 3 years ago.. only time I made a bobo as such, but it was because I had not been sent a form, so I could not have entered it anyway. Most other things they found over the years involved them owing me money, like trying to calculate that EIC stuff..

Good on ya for the precision, even if after the filing... !

[silent-o.livejournal.com]

*sings*

I'm the government. I'm the government. I'm the reason nothing works!

[albear.livejournal.com]

Holy crap Sabot! Did you catch last night's Bill Maher episode? Just before Overtime they were talking about the same very exact thing as your post mentions.

[sabotlours.livejournal.com]

And I just heard on the news this morning that there is legislation proposed that would ban the IRS from offering free software. THAT'S SOCIALISM! Gee, I wonder who would want to ban free tax software *cough cough* Intuit *cough cough*