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T-t-t-TAXMAN!
I love me some TurboTax
by Regan White
regan@thecharlotteweekly.com
By and large, America is a country that is idiot-friendly. Our shampoo bottles list directions for how we should wash our hair – cheerily suggesting we lather, rinse and repeat. The boiling, yellow sulphuric hot springs at Yellowstone National Park carry placards that say things like “Danger! Do not walk here. Injury or death could occur.” Eschewing Darwinism, we carefully cloister those who lack common sense, offering equal opportunity and boundless direction to geniuses and nimrods alike.
Lingo limbo
Thus it has always astounded me that tax forms read with all the ease and enjoyment of NASA launch sequences or sticky legal clauses. The forms start off simply enough, asking for one’s name, Social Security number and marital status. It’s halfway down the first page where migraines start to set in. Three-quarters down the page I’m left wondering if I own a farm – and if it might behoove me to own a farm. Do I qualify for a domestic production activities deduction? Where will I find Schedules T, U and Z and how will I fill out form 1392?
I don’t consider myself dumb. Thus I can only wonder how the really stupid people fare when filing their taxes. Oh what do the stupid folk do? Heaven forbid you work or conduct business in multiple states or even – I tremble to type it – across multiple countries.
Filing taxes is the perfect way to rein in one’s thoughts about future familial expansion as well. After glancing over my tax forms, I think it’s going to be way too complicated for me to ever get married, own a home or invest in anything anywhere. Children might provide a nice tax break, but the headaches down the line with schedules for education and child care costs and all that nonsense are just too much. And don’t think of leaving any inheritance to me. I don’t even want to deal with it.
Like most, I don’t relish doing my taxes – even when a refund is coming my way. This year the deadline kind of caught me with my taxable pants down – even with the extra two days. Last week I told my family the IRS would be lucky if I filed this year.
Taxing trepidation
It was then that my ever plucky co-worker Alison Woo suggested I introduce myself to TurboTax. “You don’t even have to buy the software,” she enthused. “You just log on to TurboTax.com, fill out the forms and you can even file electronically! You don’t even have to print anything out or mail anything.”
This positive plug came, of course, after Woo admitted that she is one of the rare creatures who has always enjoyed doing her taxes. So much so that she does them for her entire family. She even set up a tax center for the elderly and infirm at her high school when she was 13 years old. I took her enthusiasm for TurboTax with a boulder of salt, particularly when she added, “You’ll feel like you’re playing a video game! It’s so easy!”
Certainly no taxes I had ever encountered reminded me of the joys of Pacman or Frogger. But deadlines breed desperation, and by Sunday, April 15, I found myself reluctantly scraping together receipts and sitting down to file on TurboTax.
TurboTax me
Woo did not lie or oversell. TurboTax is everything it’s cracked up to be. Goodbye painful paperwork, hello simple prompts like “Are you a farmer?” Gone was the phrasing that always ticks me off – the jargon about dividends, less profit and mutual funds.
As Woo promised, my taxes proceeded with arcade-like ease. Every time I completed a section, the program offered me congratulations. My refund, tabulated in a ticker in the upper left-hand corner, happily clicked away with every entry I made. I half expected to see smiling icons telling me I had gained an extra life and made it to the next round.
It saved every entry automatically so I didn’t have to worry about losing the work I had already completed. It also didn’t waste my time – cutting out sections that didn’t apply to me by offering things such as “We gather from your entries that you do not qualify for a disability deduction. Is this true?” And it rolled over all of my personal and federal tax information into my state filing so I didn’t have to repeat any work. I was able to electronically file, electronically sign and designate that my funds be directly deposited into my checking account. I even received e-mails saying that my federal and state taxes had been received and accepted.
No fuss, no muss and, in my case, a bigger refund than I’ve ever received. Federal tax preparation and filing with TurboTax: $29.95. State tax preparation and filing with TurboTax: $34.95. Not wanting to kill myself so I don’t have to deal with my taxes ever again – priceless.
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