Tag Archives: IRS

Rights and Wrongs

A lot happened today, Tax Day. I re-did all our taxes and finished them and paid a software publisher $250 to file them. They will not do so, and an extension was the only way to go. We don’t owe a dime. They owe us, which is great news.

The week before Thanksgiving 2014 I drove my husband’s car halfway across the country because he’d been getting rental cars for months. He drove it the rest of the way and used it to get to work and back from any number of hotels. If anyone needs to stay in a hotel in Silicon Valley for several months my husband can tell you the best way to do it.

So, we put in for mileage for the nearly six weeks my husband had his car in CA last year. Now the government thinks we own or are leasing/selling or have a fleet of cars. My husband drove one car to CA, charged for mileage, and sent it home to another state.

IRS and CA keep asking me to delete the zero on the sale amount and leave it blank. I did so a number of times. Then after I paid the $250 in filing fees after fighting this forever, the software provider said I had to fix the error of my “fleet” or copy and send everything in by mail without any support after I paid $60 for “audit protection.” So I got an extension. We don’t owe anything to anyone but I would like us to see us the money they owe us someday, so have to get around the purported sale of my husband’s car when it is sitting in our underground garage, for now, until they park it and mine in the open in an unsafe neighborhood for the next ten days. Then it just might be stolen. Another debacle. Police, insurance, taxes. Tomorrow is another day, said Scarlett O’Hara.

They’ve been re-doing our underground garage for two weeks and it’s been a constant travail. Not for me, because I feed the temporary valets and placed a cute talking pig on my key chain so they know me. We pay a fortune to park here and we’re now supposed to take a bus to get to an open lot and back. May I remind you that our family “fleet” consists of two old cars that get us from point A to point B and hopefully back to A, home. They are fully owned by us and used personally except for a brief business use for one when my husband was far away for work for several months.

A good thing, indeed more than one is that I can look up the conflicting tax forms tomorrow morning, my husband is actually scheduling to be home two days each weekend instead of one, and I’ve a potential dog sitter to interview if we take a weekend off or go home-hunting. One must take the good with the bad. Cheers! Dee

 

Mentors and Nice Pets

Let’s start. We’re nice pets to have. I was very upset when I started our taxes and we were getting money back. Then we got the second W-2 after the company changed hands and we owed money. I thought there was a horrible mistake, then I went through the 100 questions and figured it out.

We pay a lot to live here, if we had kids they’d be off to college or if younger, in private school if we could afford it. Otherwise our kids would be going into a sub-par school district. We pay a lot and don’t use the service so we’re a good pet to have around. So shave a couple hundred dollars off the taxes we already gave you and we’re good to go.

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As to mentors, of course there were my parents. Still my Dad (Mom’s gone nearly 6 years now). I never thought I had any but they are there throughout my life. Even as a kid I knew I didn’t want to vacuum in pouffed hair, a dress and heels but Mom was smart.

Other than parents, before I was eight I’d gotten two mentors, MR and GG. Both were educated men who taught me about science, radios, philosophy, psychology and more. MR allowed me and my little sister to come over once a year to watch Dorothy change the world to color with all the Munchkins and go to Emerald City. GG taught me the word triskadekaphobia which means fear of the number thirteen.

MR died recently. It’s good that we got to see each other a few years ago. I know he led a good life with wife and family. I’ve had other male and female mentors to be spoken of later. Right now my thoughts are with our old neighborhood and friends. I wasn’t allowed to cross the next street so our street had seven homes on it so as far as mentors were concerned, I was blessed.

Dad would be called on every night for two-base softball in our back yard or touch football in the street and everyone, all the girls, played because that was his rule. When it was dark everyone went home and slept soundly. The street will never be the same. MR, I don’t know what your handle was but may it be retired in your name, sir. Dee