So, today was tax day. Rather, today was the day we had our taxes done.
We got up early so we could get to the place to get our taxes done. We got there just before they opened and there was already a line. Five days before Tax Day (April 15), no surprise there’s a line. We signed in and sat down to start waiting. A lot of waiting. I should have taken a book with me.
We finally got called after two hours. Our reputation preceded us, however. The lady who called us was a first-timer, i.e. this was the first year she was doing taxes. The guy who runs the office has done our taxes before and stopped her. He knows our taxes can be … complex … so he said we needed someone with more experience and had us sit down. Even so, we had to wait another half hour for the more experienced guy to get freed up.
When we finally got the guy to look over our taxes he took an hour and a half to get through them. I’m glad he was thorough. He went through all our documentation and entered it into their system. The final verdict was that we owed money this year. Not the best outcome but manageable, especially as it wasn’t an exorbitant amount.
Then we had to go back to waiting, although this time not for very long. Their process is that one person prepares the tax form, and another, more experienced person reviews it to make sure everything is right. Our reviewer is one we’ve had before and I trust he knows what he’s doing. Unfortunately, the original guy made an error and not in our favor. He added things up on his scratch pad properly but hadn’t entered it into their system properly. The reviewer made the correction and our tax debt increased 4.5 times! Bad preparer, no cookie!
Not happy about the outcome but still not a terribly large amount overall.
We came home, ate lunch, then started working on the garage again. First off, lots of dust has collected on things in the garage over the years. Very bad for my sinuses. Had a choking fit at one point. Second, we have a lot of old paint, chemicals and batteries we have to get rid of. We can’t just toss them in the garbage, they need to be disposed of properly. That means a trip downtown to the waste recycling place. I’ll have to schedule an appointment to haul all our stuff down there so we can get rid of it.
I can say that progress has been made. There is actual floor space in there now. We even have some room to get a ladder in there so we can get up to the rafters to see what is up there. I know there is a dog crate up there, and maybe some flooring tiles. Beyond that, it’s a mystery and one that must be solved by the time we finish cleaning things out of the house. We have one small corner area and one wall to be finished with the garage. So looking forward to that.
I hope all is going well with you in your world, my Hordeling.
If you’d like to support my efforts, why not buy me a chocolate chip cookie through my Ko-Fi page? https://ko-fi.com/jhusum