I can’t do my taxes. I should be able to but I can’t. I do all the things required and fill all the blanks required so the intent is there I just don’t follow through with enough of them to actually do them or I do too many of them. I’m on my fourth? Third? year of attempting. I’m not even sure why we do them. Wouldn’t it be easier to not take the money then to take it and make me fill out papers to get it back. Is it a saving account for the government? Or for me? If I had to pay I wouldn’t think this? Why do some? Why does my having kids give me so many credits? Isn’t that a motivation to procreate? We have a lot of people. A good economics class I was in once would have explained these thing, had I listened. Maybe that’s all they should do. Have a tax class? Maybe I had one?
Year one. I am a few hours from the deadline to do them and ask my neighbor to help. It should be easy he says. You just have the one job, no deductions. Piece of cake. I submitted at 11:50 the night before the deadline. I was in a haze still from medications so for all I know I entered a pageant. They were accepted and I was given a refund. I was not in a pageant.
Year two. I try myself. It can’t be hard. It looked easy. I did them online. I submitted them and they again were accepted. I waited and waited and waited. I finally checked the status and it just said in processing. Then I called. Have you ever called the tax place? I was on hold for so long my phone went dead the first time. The second time I watered an entire house of plants before I was connected. To the wrong department. I would need the audit review department. Audit? I’m being audited? I have to prove not just who I am but that I gave birth to my kids. I did my taxes to early in the year and it was flagged that I might be an imposter. I also entered the wrong income in. From the looks of the number, I made it up. The only thing I could come up with was I was told I could do my taxes off of my last paystub. So I did this instead of waiting maybe 15 days for the proper form. I left two places blank in regards to my kids. I checked that one lived with me the entire year and left the other two blank but listed them. I somehow checked I was a college student. I wanted to be but I was not. To them I was trying to claim a credit I didn’t deserve.
The layout of a tax form is just weird to me. You have to follow lines and numbers with sub numbers and sub letters and move across and over but slightly down but not as far to the left as the last question. Then skip to here but go back up to there. Sign here and check this but not that. It is like a connect the dot to me. I suggested several times on my various calls to make the forms easier. Easier then a form that says EZ. It should be more like a math problem. This is what you made and then we took this and this we took comes back. In my mind it should be three lines long. I shouldn’t have to prove I have kids except that since the form has the boxes to say so if they are left unattended then you could be claiming you gave birth to someone else’s kids. And, this happens. I could send them a picture? Of the birth? No they would need school records, day care records, my daughters IEP, the actual W2. I wondered if it would be easier to drive them to meet the tax people.
I wrote them a really long letter to explain all my errors. On yellow legal pad paper. How I was trying. Trying to get out on my own. Trying to be fiscally responsible. Trying to be a good taxer. But I am tired, I’m struggling with your forms, I should hire someone but I want to prove I can do this. To myself not just you. I am not even sure who this letter went to but it’s in my file which I’m sure is thick. They may have even assigned an entire room and one single person to annually check on me.
Once the audit was complete they determined that I exist and so do my kids but I’m not good at following directions. Which I didn’t really need a tax audit to know, I could have had them just ask my first grade teacher. From the year before. They found an error the year before. That year before when I didn’t do a pageant, but just did my taxes wrong. I missed entering a retirement payout. I just didn’t know I had to and didn’t know the question was there and never got the form to say so from a year of moving too many times to get to somewhere else. It was lost in the mail. Because for awhile I had no place to be mailed.
I didn’t have to do a corrected form they did it for me. Not a courtesy but required rules. Tax rules. Then they denied my credits for the current year so I was actually given no return at all and now owed thousands of dollars from the previous year. I learned if you have certain credits you have to wait to file until a certain date so the tax people know you are really you and deserve the credits. It’s to reduce fraud. The new rules have caught thousands and millions of dollars of people trying to be other people. Good rule. You also can’t use your pay stub. You use your forms required. You also claim any retirements. You also don’t get to say you are in college if you just wish you could go back and become a forest entomologist. Its not the same as going. Just dreaming isn’t doing. In the midst of all of that the government shut down for awhile delaying all my answers forcing me to wait.
Then the next year year three, I figured it would be a fresh start. I would do it right. Enter and follow rules like a good tax preparer. I knew a lot of the rules by now after not knowing them. I did it by hand. Mailed it in properly so they would see I was serious. This method takes longer but I wondered if the backlight on a screen was throwing me off. I can’t read books on a screen. Maybe I can’t do taxes on one too. I like and prefer paper.
I had to do an additional form to show I deserved credit for having my kids. They penalized me the year previous for not claiming the payout from the previous two years before. I had to wait a year. I would get no notice or be able to check online for this tax years news. They finally mailed me a letter. It said they approved my credits. I was so proud!
Then eventually they mailed my return. Which was none. They used it to pay my thousands of dollars. Which I expected and hoped I had done enough right things to achieve that. I was looking for a clean slate. I just owed a small amount. Which shouldn’t be right? It should have payed the entire debt. I look back through my papers. I find nothing wrong. I think. Then I go weeks and get my state refund but I don’t get one they say that one of the social security numbers for a child doesn’t match their records. I check them all. I looked multiple times before I found that I was off by one number on my daughter. The last single number. Just written out wrong. I would have to file an amended return. This means it is also wrong on federal. This is also why my debt wasn’t resolved. They didn’t recognize a child I had sent all the school records and her IEP about because her unique citizen code was not correct. They can’t assume or use process of elimination. They need accurate enters and numbers to produce accurate numbers or the entire system likely fails. We can’t pay taxes based on assumptions. Taxes are a certainty like death.
I’m not like a corporate attorney or Martha Stewart. Who I love.I should be able to do this. I worried they would lock me up. Or force an economics class on me. I don’t know which would be worse? Do you go to jail for just not being good at it? Are they a little exhausted reading each year I suck. That I can’t seem to get it together. Do they look back and see I was once with another citizen who could do this for me. Why didn’t she just stay with him? Let him handle things. Because he handled too many things. So many that I can’t handle my things. People should be allowed to at minimum try to handle things.
The mistake is still being resolved. I sent the amended return and moved into an entire new tax year. Then received a letter again from state saying someone else was trying to claim my kids. I knew the someone else. He used to do taxes for me. The federal people picked it up. Thanks to my previous audit they saw that in fact I was the one to earn the rights to these people. Except the one I entered wrong. Sad face. That will work itself out. The state lady I called was so wonderful. I barely had to wait. I had no options to connect to her she was connectable in just the numbers only given. She told me it’s common for separated people to claim kids they didn’t have living with them. She needed proof they had lived with me that year. She couldn’t go off of the federal audit she was told. Again, they can’t assume to pay taxes. They had to do their job making sure I did mine. It was sent in and resolved.
Now I’m into this year. Year four. So four years. I was going to hire someone but am so determined to get it right. I sat one day quietly and did them from my device. I took deep breaths and had no distractions. I felt proud when it was accepted. Then I waited. Then my dad died. I want to help pay for his last trip to Chicago. I checked the status. It said. We sent you a check but it was not deliverable and it came back to us. Call this number and tell them the correct address. I checked, I saw that my address was correct. I called. They are not open due to the virus and I’m directed online. Online directs me back to an office closed. I try the help line at the tax place I did my taxes at. We chat online and they say to contact the closed number or look online. Then I try calling them and they are also closed.
I google. Google says to do a better job knowing where you live. I look again on my forms. It looks right. I know my address. I’m currently helping my daughter daily write it. Have I written it so much I don’t know it? It’s become too familiar and yet also not? I look through my papers and look for the printed return. Again, backlight on screens makes numbers and letters too bright. I find it. I put apartment IG instead of 1G. See how close they look? I entered a capital I instead of a number 1. Online they look the same to me. They still do right now and I’m not sure I’m not wrong or right. The printed one is clear as day wrong. I file an amended return and use the little space provided to explain in detail my error. I’m pretty much saying I moved from this apartment that never existed to the one I actually live in. Now I wait. I do wait well. I just don’t do taxes well. I will always have next year to really get it right. Maybe I could go to college to be a tax preparer. Then I could actually claim I went to college? Learn all the tax rules.
Aspenleaf 