IRStupid

I use a tax program to prepare my taxes, since I have a bunch of interest and dividend stuff that's pretty confusing. Of course, tax on it isn't generally withheld automatically, so I usually owe taxes.

This year, though, I spotted a $2000 credit for buying a low-emission vehicle, naming the car I'd bought as one of the examples that qualified. That pushed me barely over into refund territory. Yay! So I wrote everything up, e-filed, and figured I was done for the year.

Until suddenly, in the shower this morning, I realized that I bought my hybrid in late December 2003, which means I wasn't actually eligible for the tax credit. Gaaaah!

So now I have to file a '1040X' to correct the problem, and a huge check for the difference between the refund I'm getting and the amount I'll actually have to pay, and maybe a bill for penalties, although I think if I get the correction in before April 15th I'm okay. Hopefully, the tax program (Tax Cut) has 1040X as one of the forms it can send in, otherwise I'll have to fill one out by hand. Yuck. >.<

At least it looks like I still won't owe enough to need to make estimated tax payments. I hate (and usually forget) those.

IReallyStupid

Yeah, apparently I already claimed the clean-fuel deduction last year. It's right there on my 2003 1040, I'm not sure how I missed it. Well, other than that I never look at the stupid forms because I just let the program ask me questions and magically fill things in.

The tax program sort of handles the 1040X... it has the form, along with kludgy and *almost* correct instructions on how to get all the right values into it. So that's taken care of.

Only thing is, I have to actually mail the 1040X and the new 1040, which means I have to print them. And my ancient printer has apparently finally gone belly up... or maybe it just ran out of ink, which amounts to the same thing.

I think... I'd better go get a new printer. Gah.

H8

Go buy a printer. Simple. Find one that looks good. Bring it home. Notice that it needs 1.1 GIGABYTES to install its drivers. Curse. Run disk cleanup wizard to compress files.

[two hours pass]

...close disk cleanup wizard at the 30% mark... there's enough space now. Start installing drivers. Halfway through setup, find out that the bulk of the files can be put on a different hard drive, one with plenty of space. Get to the section of the wizard where it tells you to plug in the printer. Find out that modern printer manufacturers consider the cable connecting the printer to the computer to be an 'optional accessory', since I guess you can run it as a fax machine without it, perhaps. Oh, except that it needs to be initialized, so you really can't even do that, not that having a fax machine would help me in any way shape or form.

Drive around looking for a computer store that isn't closed already. Fail. Get back to find the driver install program 'detected that the device was plugged in' and is now trying in vain to initialize it. Kill the process. Find out that the partially-installed drivers don't show up in add/remove programs to be uninstalled so that I can try again later.

So, now my apartment is a disaster area with packaging everywhere and a useless cable-free printer on the floor (it's a fucking USB printer, which means I can only hook it up to my laptop, and there's nowhere to put a printer near my laptop), and I'm going to have to let this fucking tax bullshit carry over into a third day, assuming I can buy a cable (the way things are going, that seems optimistic) and the printer installation works this time.

AND, just to add insult to injury, I can't kick holes in the walls because I don't own the building.