Taxes Are Eating My Weekend.
Yes. I had a busy week last week. Busier than normal, I mean, because I am covering someone else’s car jockey shifts which means I only didn’t work a 12-hour day on Wednesday. Next week will be the same. The Thursday guy is (I think) on safari in Africa. Maybe I made that up because he has cool aviator sunglasses and a bomber jacket and looks like a really accomplished nature photographer. I don’t know.
Anyway, I decided to have a really relaxing weekend because the week kicked my butt and I just wanted to be ready for next week, but I also needed to do my taxes. So, blithely, I thought, “Oh, I’ll just get them done quickly.” So I got one of those online programs that does the math for you, and I got all my papers and went to work.
FML. The government wants fourteen hundred dollars from me. Which seems really weird, because I am not exactly rolling in the bucks. I assumed I have screwed up. I tweaked the numbers. They still want over a grand. It’s been six hours of tweaking and it is just getting worse.
So I called my dad, and he will come help me, because my dad rules at math, and government stuff.
I hope he doesn’t come over when E and his friends are fixing our new barbecue. Which E got for free because he rules (and has a rich guitar buddy who is always giving people his it’s-not-first-rate-it’s-a-year-old stuff.)
Or maybe I do want my dad here when they are fixing it, because then I could be sure that no one would die in a fiery explosion. The barbecue needs to be fitted for propane. I get nervous around propane. E’s friend Russell said it wouldn’t blow up, but his flatulence is more powerful than his mind. E’s other friend Scott is coming over, and he has a giant brain, but it is full of computer guy stuff. Dad probably knows what to do for sure.
So instead of relaxing, I am worried that I am going to be a homeless person in order to also be a law abiding taxpayer, and that I will die when E explodes the barbecue. Or that he’ll set the house on fire before Mel has his fire escape and he’ll kill him, too. Which would make us homeless, again (unless already dead). Or that one of the pets will get hurt.
This is too stressful, this worrying. I am going to eat some chips.
Some Stuff | Liz April 17, 2010
By Arwen, April 18, 2010 @ 9:25 pm
Don’t worry. As a self-employed person, even making next to nothing, I have had to pay taxes on my income almost every year. It’s CPP, sometimes – deductions don’t cover that.
But you can make a payment plan with them. They don’t want to homeless you. You can pay it off all year. I often pay in ahead of time, now.
By Liz, April 19, 2010 @ 7:46 am
I’m glad I can make a payment plan. What do youdo, send them a meek letter?
By Arwen, April 19, 2010 @ 9:25 am
No meekness necessary! They offer you the option of a payment plan; they don’t expect people to necessarily have it up front. But I’ve paid between $400 and $2000 to taxes each year as a self-employed person, usually in installments, because I wasn’t clear on the whole CPP not being something you could deduct away thing.
At first I just always paid after the fact: now that I have some clue as to what’s coming, I do tend to pay in ahead of time. This past year, based on John jumping jobs around (consulting, lay-off money, and then “regular” employment) I ended up overpaying him because I misguessed the tax rate because I misguessed our total income, so HE got a return, but I’d underpaid my taxes by $35-. Which, hey, not too bad.
Anyway. Don’t freak out. This is all normal and they’re not going to be mad at you. It’s what happens when you don’t have someone doing the source deduction, and a lot of people are in that boat, suddenly, because contract/part-time/self-employment is on the rise.
By Arwen, April 19, 2010 @ 9:27 am
(( Oh, and the above is illustrative of why they don’t mind that you’ve “misjudged” your income tax payment by $1500- as long as you’re paying in installments – if you’re self-employed, you often don’t know what your total income in a given year will be, and so even if you’re paying taxes you may be paying the wrong bracket. That’s as normal for the self-employed as T4s are from the employee. ))
By Liz, April 19, 2010 @ 12:34 pm
OK, good to know. I can do installments. It just means the student loan people won’t be out of my life as soon. Gah. Thanks, Government.
By Arwen, April 19, 2010 @ 4:39 pm
Ah, well, issues with rate of taxation I have no solution for. g
Well, maybe I do! One of the things that helped me get a bit more comfortable was learning that I was paying CPP, and that would be mine again eventually.
Well, if it’s still around post-Boomer, I suppose. However, CPP’s the one where you get out at the rate you put in (instead of OAS, which is a flat rate), so in the long run it might end up a couple hundred extra bucks now that ends up being more than a hundred extra bucks in your dotage.
Of course, if it’s still around post-Boomer. Which, well, I don’t know if there’s a guarantee on that. Course, I’m not sure what the guarantee on the coming economy post-Boomer is, either.
Whee!
By Liz, April 19, 2010 @ 8:37 pm
I have the same issue., I’m paying my future self. Unless the Boomers use it all up paying for knee operations so they can run half-marathons. In which case, I just want to go out and buy, like, a marine iguana refuge or something, and screw the lot of them.