Tax time…
April 19, 2007
Tax time…
Well, that was exciting. I confess I am a procrastinator, to the core. But with the grace of God, I am really trying to change that aspect of myself (more on that later.)
Procrastination has caused numerous late arrivals, missed appointments, missed opportunities and cost me millions of dollars in library fines. And don’t get me started on late movies to Blockbuster…I like their “new” rental procedure…much friendlier to the procrastinator in me.
One thing, however, I have not habitually put off is tax preparation and filing. Historically I complete our taxes and send them on their way by the end of February, but not this year. I joined the millions of other procrastinators around the country and literally waited until the last minute. I actually delayed tax prep for a reason, I guess. My dearest and I have been going through a Crown Financial study and my focus has been on developing and implementing a debt reduction plan and our new budget. I tend to be a one big project at a time girl, so I didn’t want to start the tax project until I wrapped up the budget project…little did I know.
Do you know what it is like to efile? I have been doing it for years without hesitation or concern, because I always knew if something went wrong (like if it didn’t work), then I had 2 months to fix it. But when you file 50 minutes before midnight, well, your perspective changes. If it (the efile process) doesn’t work, well, I am out of t.i.m.e. Fortunately, the IRS understood my situation as well and extended (even longer) tax time. Well, they didn’t do it for me, per se. I use Turbo Tax to file and so do apparently a gazillion other people (amateur and professionals alike). The TT computers were inundated with late filers on Tuesday night and I kept getting an error-type message from the Intuit website. Talk about s.t.r.e.s.s!
I checked back with Turbo Tax today and my fed and state returns were in fact filed well before midnight (09:09 PM PDT)…that’s 11:09 in Nebraska. Thank goodness. A little more stress than I needed and a huge lesson learned. Moral of the story: under any circumstances, do not wait until the last minute to file.
