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I’m glad that I’m not the only one who enjoys doing taxes. I know most people dread getting them done, and seriously stress out over it.  I actually enjoy filling out the forms manually and trying to see how all of the forms interrelate. I’ve tried some tax programs a couple times in the past, but I think they tried to over-simplify things and didn’t let me override its way of doing things sometimes. That may have changed in some recent versions, but I still like doing them manually myself.

I think it is important to understand how taxes are calculated, so I can make educated decisions about how how things affect them.  I think its funny when people tell me that something is tax deductible, or make some general statement that something is good for my tax situation when they clearly don’t understand that tax consequences themselves.  Never mind that they don’t have a clue what my tax situation is like.

Anyway, I received my last W2 in the mail today, so I got started on filling out everything. I’m missing missing a couple 1099′s since I had an old address on file at a couple places, but I can estimate the income from those, then  it shouldn’t be too complicated to just correct the actual amounts once I receive them.

My general method is to start with the Schedule B (I don”t file a Schedule A since I don’t have enough deductions).  Then to work through the Schedule C for self-employment income and a Schedule SE for Self Employment tax.   Then I can generally go straight through the 1040.   Once the Federal forms are done, the state stuff is usually a pretty simple matter.   Don’t forget to look for items that are deductable at the state level that weren’t on the federal level though.   For example, in Utah, medical insurance premiums can be deducted from your income.  All of the federal forms, and all of the state forms that I’ve ever needed have been available on-line in with fill-in PDF’s, so they can be printed out nicely.

I took about 4 hours today and made it through everything.   I had one bit of complication because for most of the year I was living in Maryland, but was employed by a company in Utah that withheld Utah taxes.  After a few minutes of searching, I found that I could get a credit on my Maryland return for income taxes paid in in another state.  Unfortunately, the taxes in Maryland are quite a bit higher than in Utah, so I will end up having to pay Maryland    My new employer is out of California, and withholds Maryland taxes for me, so it will be a little simpler next year.

Overall, I did a good job of withholding the correct amount.  I’ll get a refund back from federal and from Utah, but will pay most of it to Maryland.   I’ll end up getting about $250 extra back though, and at least I won’t have to pay anything.