My Taxies

... are done! And even though I owe the federal government $50, I am expecting a refund from both the Massachusetts and Illinois D.O.R. I don't know why or how that works, but I'm not going to question it...

Last night, as I was going through the final steps to e-file my federal and Mass. returns, H&R Block tried to charge me $29.95 for what was supposed to be a free federal e-file program. I flipped. So I clicked on the "Live Help" link and busted my way into the live program support chatroom. I accosted a "live help assistant" whom I think was named Sinead O'Connor, typing long, complicated explanations to him/her about how I'd specifically followed the link from www.irs.gov, like they said to do, so that I'd get to H&RBlock.com through the correct feed to the free service, bla bla bla. Finally, Sinead just gave in. He/she gave me a code to put in a little hidden box that popped up in the upper right hand corner. And suddenly the $29.95 was subtracted from my bill. Who says nagging customer service representatives doesn't yield results?

So all I have to left to do is drop this stupid Illinois paper return in the mailbox and I'm done. Now let's just hope I don't get audited. I just figure the I.R.S. is going to take one look at my adjusted gross income and laugh. How much more of my $17,000 yearly earnings can they, in good conscience, take?