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1. After procrastinating for truly ridiculous amounts of time, I finally buckled down and did my taxes on Saturday. The federal government owes me just under $900, and the state of New York owes me $25. This is almost exactly the same result I got last year, which suggests that I forgot to adjust my withholding.
Then again, the only way I could possibly adjust my withholding would be to go back to the formula I was using in 2008, which ended with me owing both jurisdictions about $100 in April. I think, all in all, it's probably better for me to end the fiscal year with a refund rather than a bill -- it's a painless way of forcing myself to save a bit of money.
I may also technically have screwed up my state tax return a little bit. You see, I have this investment fund thingy that my parents set up when I was born (and which I have been duly ignoring ever since, on the theory that it's best to treat it as imaginary money until I retire) that seems to have been playing in foreign investments this year since the fund paid something like $3.00 to some other tax jurisdiction. So far as I can tell, I did not need to do anything about that for the IRS (they don't seem to care unless you are playing with significantly more money, or unless you itemize deductions, which I don't), but New York created some new impenetrable rule about foreign investments this year, which, after staring at it for half an hour to no avail, I decided to ignore on the basis that three dollars does not count. *shrug*
New York instituted a bunch of other tax procedure changes this year, the first of which is very sensible and long overdue in my opionion: namely, instead of making people copy out all the information on their W-2 forms by hand onto a special New York state form, they just asked taxpayers to send in the official state copy of the W-2. Finally, sanity! (If a W-2 is good enough for the IRS, I see no reason it should not be good enough for Albany.) The other change is to force people into figuring all taxes using whole dollar amounts rather than calculating things out to two decimal places to account for change; all the zeros were actually pre-printed on the tax forms. *blinks* I happen to like calculating with the full amounts, pennies and all, but whatever, their forms, their rules.
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2. Yesterday I made a verbal agreement with my landlords to extend my lease for another year. I asked to also get a written copy of the lease with the applicable date adjustments, so Mr. H will presumably mail that or drop by with a copy sometime in the next couple months.
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3. Our old plumbing problems continue at the smoke shop. The same pipe that cracked open in November sprang another leak today, though at least this one was a moderate drip rather than a high-pressure spray. Awesome maintenance guy came by, shut the valves, cut out the faulty fixture, and put in a replacement.
Then I ran the hot water in the bathroom sink for five minutes straight to get all the suddenly knocked-free rust out of the system. The water was coming out opaque orange-brown at several points, like saturated paint. Blecch. But it eventually ran clear again.
Then again, the only way I could possibly adjust my withholding would be to go back to the formula I was using in 2008, which ended with me owing both jurisdictions about $100 in April. I think, all in all, it's probably better for me to end the fiscal year with a refund rather than a bill -- it's a painless way of forcing myself to save a bit of money.
I may also technically have screwed up my state tax return a little bit. You see, I have this investment fund thingy that my parents set up when I was born (and which I have been duly ignoring ever since, on the theory that it's best to treat it as imaginary money until I retire) that seems to have been playing in foreign investments this year since the fund paid something like $3.00 to some other tax jurisdiction. So far as I can tell, I did not need to do anything about that for the IRS (they don't seem to care unless you are playing with significantly more money, or unless you itemize deductions, which I don't), but New York created some new impenetrable rule about foreign investments this year, which, after staring at it for half an hour to no avail, I decided to ignore on the basis that three dollars does not count. *shrug*
New York instituted a bunch of other tax procedure changes this year, the first of which is very sensible and long overdue in my opionion: namely, instead of making people copy out all the information on their W-2 forms by hand onto a special New York state form, they just asked taxpayers to send in the official state copy of the W-2. Finally, sanity! (If a W-2 is good enough for the IRS, I see no reason it should not be good enough for Albany.) The other change is to force people into figuring all taxes using whole dollar amounts rather than calculating things out to two decimal places to account for change; all the zeros were actually pre-printed on the tax forms. *blinks* I happen to like calculating with the full amounts, pennies and all, but whatever, their forms, their rules.
-----
2. Yesterday I made a verbal agreement with my landlords to extend my lease for another year. I asked to also get a written copy of the lease with the applicable date adjustments, so Mr. H will presumably mail that or drop by with a copy sometime in the next couple months.
-----
3. Our old plumbing problems continue at the smoke shop. The same pipe that cracked open in November sprang another leak today, though at least this one was a moderate drip rather than a high-pressure spray. Awesome maintenance guy came by, shut the valves, cut out the faulty fixture, and put in a replacement.
Then I ran the hot water in the bathroom sink for five minutes straight to get all the suddenly knocked-free rust out of the system. The water was coming out opaque orange-brown at several points, like saturated paint. Blecch. But it eventually ran clear again.
