Drew and I decided that since we were going to have many new deductions that we were unsure about (due to my having a full-time home office now) that we would go to H&R to have our taxes done this year. We decided that the papers are complicated and it was our first time writing-off some pretty complicated stuff, so we'd better go to the experts. Now, I must say first off that after about 5 minutes with the two ladies still at H&R at 6:15pm it was crystal clear that "expert" was a VERY strong word to be used in this situation. "Yeller", "Food smacker", "person who talks with her mouth full", "Person who guesses at things more than she actually knows how to do things" -- all of these would be more appropriate terms to describe these two ladies. That said, after spending 2 1/2 hours (Yes, you heard me right TWO AND A HALF HOURS!!!!!) trying to get everything done (at least an hour of this was spent "guessing" how to make the little green flag saying something wasn't right go away), we are getting a fabulous return and for that I am grateful -- VERY GRATEFUL!!! :-) (Woo-hoo!)
However, because we were filing in two states (having moved from Geawgeeah to the hurricane-infested sauna that is Louisiana during this year), they had to send our state taxes to be done by someone who does "Allstate". (I'll add here that they kept using this term as if it was some common terminology that all Americans should know. As far as I know, Allstate is a car insurance company and should, therefore, have nothing to do with filing my state taxes. My best guess is that she, the woman who does "Allstate", does taxes for ALL STATES meaning they can only do Louisiana and she knows how to do other states. That's just my guess, though.)
Now, understand that this means that someone we've never met will do our taxes without us there to explain things to her. She's going solely on the knowledge and paperwork she has received from "yellie-yellerson" and "smackie-smackerson" (described above). When we finally got to look at these state taxes (surprisingly only 2 days after we did our federal taxes), it had us owing the state of GA (in which we only resided 7 of the 12 months of the year and for whom we witheld taxes all 7 of those months) almost $800. Now, I will say that we always owe GA some money over what we withold (which I have always found strange), but it's usually around $100. How can the same jobs with the same tax forms have a $700 difference in taxes from one year to the next -- especially since the later of the two years wasn't even a full year?!?
We called and after much run around from one office to the next and messages back and forth, Drew finally got to talk to the "Allstate" lady who actually IS an expert. It seems "Yellie" and "Smackie" told her that we lived in Georgia for the entire year. Now, I find it odd that she didn't see a problem with that as she filed our Louisiana taxes at the same time, but still... Since we weren't full-time residents of Georgia for the entire year, she fixed the taxes and Georgia owes us $400!!!!!
I don't know how many of you are math whizzes, but if you haven't figured it out, that's a $1200 difference from what we were originally told. TWELVE HUNDRED DOLLARS!!!!! ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!?!
This is just a friendly reminder that if your taxes look iffy and were filled-out by anyone who makes the name "tweedle" start popping into your head, CALL AND CHECK!!!
Oh my gosh!!!
Love and Shapoopies!
Les
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