# Monday, January 16, 2006

2005 Taxes are done!

Is it April already? Nope, I'm just wicked early this year. It sure feels good to have that out of the way already.

There are consequences for not obeying the law so remember, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

[1040 Central ]

This year I used TurboTax online. Their system is nice enough to tell you how much you owe or are getting back before you have to spend a dime. They also let you start with their lowest product (Essentials) and then upsell you on their other products if you need them. That way if you have super complicated taxes you don't get 1/2 way through and have to start over again.

life
#    Comments [5] |
Tuesday, January 17, 2006 9:35:13 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)
How in the hizell did you do this already? I don't have even 10% of the documents that I need to get started and someone you're already done?

I've always been a fan of TurboTax but I think it's a little sketchy how it shows you the running refund/payment total in the corner. It seems like it was engineered to ease tax fraud, since I can just tweak the numbers until my $500 payment becomes a $500 refund...

I'm sure it would completely kill their loyal clientbase, but the system SHOULD keep an audit trail of changes you make to your tax return to verify that you're not just increasing your "charitable contributions" by 100 dollar increments until the government owes you money...
JER
Tuesday, January 17, 2006 10:47:39 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)
It helps that I don't own anything, and only have 1 W2.

And I'm not sure you can so easily tweak your taxes to do that, plus if you did, I'm sure whatever numbers you used would trigger an audit...
Kearns
Tuesday, January 17, 2006 11:19:38 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)
You definitely CAN tweak your taxes. Last year I made a typo and thought I was getting a $4,000 refund. I went back over my return to verify my info was correct and changed the total profit on my house sale by a few thousand and noticed that number take a sharp dip. The more I changed that number up or down, the more the refund/payment fluctuated. All I'm saying is that it seems like an awfully bad idea to give users access to that type of realtime information.

Aside from Ned Flanders, I've never heard of anyone filing so early.
JER
Tuesday, January 17, 2006 11:25:24 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)
I don't mean to say that you can't tweak them, but that you cannot tweak them so easily without fear of auditing.

Plus the uber-rich have been tweaking their taxes for years, time to bring that power to the common man via TurboTax!
Kearns
Thursday, January 19, 2006 9:40:52 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)
That's just hot. wanna do mine? I don't own anything either.
Henri
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