A Taxing Process

It should come as no surprise to anyone who knows me, that I don't do our taxes.  I haven't done my taxes since I was in college and used the 1040EZ and you could file on the phone!  But you get married, go through a once-in-a-lifetime natural disaster, have kids, buy cars, buy a house, etc. and the difficulty level of doing your taxes soar.  This is when I get out of the driver's seat and let Amy behind the wheel.  She is a number-crunching mastermind!  Aside from our taxes, she handles all of our family's finances.  I could never repay her for all of the hard work she does in this area for us.  But, truth be told, she loves it.  She is gifted at it.  This year, her ability to scour tax forms, deductions, receipts, and numbers truly paid off.  We have never received a refund from our taxes.  With my status as self-employed we most likely never will, since I have to pay in self-employment taxes.  Now, that's how I understand it.  As you can tell from the information given above, this may or may not be an accurate understanding.  But I'm willing to state that I am a good 90% sure.  Sadly, we always owe Uncle Sam lots of our hard-earned money come April 15th.  The worst was when we went through Katrina and everything was all wonky.  I don't remember the exact amount we owed (although I'm sure Amy does) but it was ridiculously huge.  Since then it has gone down slightly as we have grown and matured, learning to better manage our finances (thank you Dave Ramsey).

This year though marks a momentous occasion!  No, we did not get a refund, but it is about as close to one as we will every get.  On her second pass through our taxes before submitting, yes Amy does several trial runs before mailing off the official paperwork and you're about to see why that is a wonderful trait, she found some more deductions we could make.  This year, thanks to Amy's spectacular accounting skills, we will only owe (insert drum roll here) $3.90!  Yes folks, there is a decimal in there along with a severe lack of 0's!  Woo hoo!  Needless to say when we found this out, it was like Christmas!  So, we are happily entering 2010 with hopes of a similar victory in about 12 months!  Amy's mom came over this afternoon so Amy could work her magic on her taxes also.  While she didn't get it down to the rock-bottom price we owe, she was able to shave off a good amount from what she does owe.  So, take that H&R Block - we don't need you or your services!  HA!  Ahhh, what a great feeling to know that Uncle Sam can't even order a value meal at McDonald's with what we owe him!  Better to stick to the dollar menu!

All is well, without emptying our wallets, in Drosche Land.