I did our family's taxes when we first got married, but stopped once Doug became part owner of PVC Compounders. I remember the long forms that we had to use and the booklet that explained all of the rules, had the salary charts and held the codes that we needed to complete the process. Back then it usually took me several days to get them done.
Even though PVC had dissolved years ago we still had someone else prepare our taxes for us. I was teaching and didn't have as much time as I did in the past to devote to tax regulations. Once I quit I decided to try doing them once again. It would save us over a $100. Plus both Brett and Cal needed someone to do theirs, so it made sense to see if I could just do everyone's.
Preparing taxes had changed drastically in the ten years that I had stopped doing them. Tax software had replaced the booklets and e-filing took care of all of the forms. I tried several different sites and finally settled on FreeTaxUSA. It gave me the most information and explained it well. Some sites were completely free to file both federal and state tax returns, but they weren't as thorough. There was no charge for the federal return on FreeTaxUSA, but I did have to pay around $12 for the state return. I found it to be well worth it as it had saved me way more than that every tax season.
This year was no exception. We all saved money through their maximum refund analyzer and complete review of our tax information. I filed Cal, Meg and our's in February and we were extremely pleased with the money that we all got back this year. The software also allowed me to prepare our taxes before the IRS even accepted returns making ours one of the first to get processed. We all had our money back in our accounts well before March. Meg used hers to help pay for a new pair of Birkenstocks, Cal saved his for his new apartment and we used ours to pay off Meg's new car.
Brett's taxes were a little more complicated this year as he had worked for four different companies. I had started on his when I did ours, but once I realized that he would owe money this year, I decided to wait until closer to the deadline to finish them. Even though the IRS had extended theirs until May 17th, Brett still wanted to have his taxes done by April. He had the money saved in his checking account from his stimulus check already and Indiana hadn't extended their filing date. Therefore, it made sense to get them done.
I spent this morning working on Brett's taxes. I rechecked everything that I had entered for him previously to make sure that there were any errors. I was so thankful that I did. His state W-2 from storage express was difficult to read and I hadn't recorded the correct local and state taxes when I first worked on his forms. Once I fixed that error, Brett instantly recouped $200 on the total that was owed. That was great news. but I really didn't think I'd find much else. Thankfully, I was wrong. This was the first year that Brett had worked as an independent contractor for an election reporting company. He didn't make a lot of money, but since they didn't take out any taxes on his 1099-NEC, I thought he'd owe quite a bit of it. I did a lot of research and realized that because he worked from home for them during that six month period, he could claim part of his rent and utilities as a business expense. I called Doug to make sure that he that he agreed with the information that I was reading. He definitely did and once I put in the changes Brett's taxes were cut by almost another $200. I called Brett right away and he was thrilled to hear that instead of owing $598 he would only have to pay $218. I was very excited for him and proud to have helped him with the the savings. I always told Doug that I should have been an accountant instead of a teacher. Maybe I was right!
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