April 15th approaches!
As CP alluded to earlier, my initial run through back in February showed us owing, and owing a lot, so I'm happily putting writing that check off until the bitter end.
So I finally took Saturday to finalize things. I figured it'd be quick and easy since I'd already penciled everything in, just needed to double check the work and sign. Hah!
Mistake 1: Wrong form. Can't use the EZ because I've got dividend income. Dang, off to the IRS and franchise tax board websites to download the 1040A and the 540A.
Mistake 2: Turns out I made a really careless math error and overstated our wages by $10K on the 1040! Sweet, that meant $1000 less to pay than I thought. We still owed, but a lot less.
Annoyance 1: Because our witholding was so out of whack this year (CP's was really low, and me only working half a year screwed things up), we owed quite a bit...enough that we have to pay an underpayment penalty. Grrr. Well, that meant a frenzy of paperwork as I double checked that we did have to pay it, and began to estimate how much. In the middle of estimating how much, I notice that because my wages changed through the year, I may be eligible to have it waived. Okay, that's ANOTHER form...and it's really complex. Grrr. I'm spending half an hour plus running around trying to fill these forms out. Finally I say, screw it, I won't have it waived, I'll pay it and be done with it. So I run through the estimate...it's $15
If I had know that...
Mistake 3: Okay, so I get it done, get them signed, and bring it all to work today to get it mailed. I give it ONE more scan...and realize that on the Federal form I managed to look at the wrong column in the tax table!!!
I've never made this many mistakes doing my taxes, geeeeez. So now, that's another $500 less, AND it means we
don't have to pay the underpayment penalty.
Oh well, at least I caught the mistakes and they meant paying LESS. Much better than finding mistakes and learning you have to pay MORE. But there was about an hour of wasted effort and frustration as I pointlessly dealt with estimating and attempting to waive the penalty.