Incompetent IRS!!!!

[Broomjockey]

I'm annoyed because of this thread. Why? Because it's now the middle of February, and I have not gotten a bleeding thing related to my taxes. Seriously. No T4s, nothing. If I don't get them soon, I think I'm gonna start having to bust heads.

[Giggle Goose]

Since I was a dependent in the 2007 tax year, I didn't get the stimulus check that everyone else got, so I'm getting a $492 credit . That's because I'm filing as an independent for the first time. I also got mad money for the interest I paid on student loan debt, along with the actual money paid for my college expenses.

But when I tried to call the IRS to get my AGI, I was told that there was an extremely high call volume and that I wouldn't be able to do it when I called this evening. I might go to my local IRS office since there's one nearby, but I'm sure everyone working there is going to be as cranky and incompetent as the reps you guys all had to deal with. Of course, there's probably an exception, but I can't say I've had a positive experience so far....

[Dips]

I knew I would owe this year so I wanted to do my taxes before we filed the financial aid forms. I've always done my own taxes by hand.

This year I had a trial version of TurboTax. It does all work for both federal a state taxes and if you want to print it out and efile, you simply buy it. That sounded like a good offer. If I didn't like it, I'd just not buy it and do my taxes by hand instead.

Well, I have Vista and it wouldn't let TT install from the CD. I went to the TT site and downloaded a fix which would copy files from the CD onto my desktop and let me install that way. The progress window said it could take a while.

Not having anything better to do while I was waiting, I decided to do my taxes by hand. I finished the 1040 with schedule A and form stating that we paid college tuition. TT? Still copying.

I had some lunch, ran some errand and came home.

TT? Still copying.

OK. I started on the state form. Massachusetts has a four page form 1. Then I had to fill out a two page schedule to prove I had health insurance. Oh, and we made $4 in interest on our mortgage escrow at an out-state-bank. Declaring that required that I fill out another two page schedule.

I got them all done. TT? Still copying.

Since I was done, I stopped the process, deleted the files that had been copied and removed the disk.

Maybe next year I'll race TT again.