Saturday, March 13, 2021

Filed My Income Taxes...

      ...I hope.  These electronic online filings, it looks like it works but I'm always nervous until the Feds hand me back a little of my money.

     It's not a low-stress activity for me -- I managed to get audited once, years ago, when I moved out of a duplex I owned and lost money trying to rent out both sides. When I couldn't (little matter of a long-term bridge outage*), I  ended up making a deal with a former co-worker to live there at a very low rent and keep the heat on: I'd've done better leaving it empty, running ads, and making a serious effort to get it rented at or above market rates and deducting those costs, except I couldn't afford to front the money.  (I was buying the house on contract and ended up handing it back to the seller after that: it was too expensive to own.)

     So....I owed the Internal Revenue Service a fairly large amount of money for nearly ten years, did not have it, could not get it and therefore I handed over every refund until some windfall killer overtime allowed me to finally clear the debt.  Protip: if you own nothing of real value (a used beater car and 6,000 used science fiction paperbacks don't count), the IRS can't do much to you.  Downside, you're not gonna be doin' much, either.

     Nevertheless, the experience left a mark.  There's damn-all for wiggle room with the IRS.
___________________________
* The duplex was in a medium-sized town with a fairly big river: there was one bridge between the neighborhood and a large state college.  It was a short walk or bike ride between the two when the bridge was there -- and a much longer drive without it.  Economics: there are a lot of interconnections.

1 comment:

Glypto Dropem said...

I did mine a week ago. I expect my refund direct deposit this week, unless the IRS is jammed up with returns and stimulus payments.

Glad you're feeling better.