Its 11:52pm, on April 17 - and guess what I just did? Yeah, that's right, my taxes. Ok, I didn't just start them or anything, but I had to finish them up and e-file them tonight. Well of course I decided to go to the Nationals-Braves baseball game tonight because the Braves were only in town for 2 games ... I left after the 7th inning stretch since it was sooo cold and windy!! It was neat to see the Nationals all wearing various Virginia Tech hats as a tribute to those affected by the horrible tragedy at VA Tech yesterday. There's a cool video on espn.com showing it.
So I came home and opened up Turbo Tax and made a few adjustments, talked to a couple people online (thinking that I had plenty of time), and by 11:30 I was finished - ready to upload, file, and go to bed. Well when I pushed the 'send' button, an error message popped up that said something like "We're sorry, due to an unexpected amount of filing, we are unable to accept returns at this time. There is no need to contact Customer Service. Instead, please try to file at another time. The best time is between 4am and 4pm Pacific Standard Time. Thank you." Hmmm ... not exactly what you want to read when you have 1/2 hour left to file your taxes!!! 4am Pacific Standard Time is 1am here ... and that is April 18, one day too late.
What exactly DOES happen if you file your taxes late? How much are you penalized? Does a few hours or a day really make THAT big of a difference?
In the meantime, my tax return is printing - and not in the 'fast format' that I usually print things out in, for some odd reason, it didn't give me any options. Of course the ink in my printer starts to run out and the little message pops up that tells me the quality of my print-outs will diminish since the ink is almost gone ... great ...
At that point, I decided that I should probably fill out one of the 'File an Extension' forms and take it to the Post Office to have it postmarked by midnight. I know of one post office that stays open until midnight, but have no idea if I can even make it there in time. So I'll take a chance that the other one closer to my house is open late on Tax Day. Unfortunately - my entire tax return - Federal and State - have to print in their entirety before the Extention form I just completed would print. Will there be any ink left in my printer by the time it gets through all the other pages? 
Hmm - I don't even have a 'normal' envelope ... so I pulled out a Hallmark Fresh Ink card envelope, with green squares and circles on it, and addressed it to the Internal Revenue Service in Atlanta, Georgia. Gotta keep things interesting at the IRS every so often, right?
I kept trying to e-file ... once it actually looked like it was connecting, uploading information, and then another error message came up. I tried again. Sorry, no such luck. Again, nothing. Hmm, this is getting very frustrating. My returns finally finished printing out, as I now had a sweatshirt and shoes on with my pajamas, ready to run out the door and try to make it to the Post Office in time. The Extension form finally printed, I folded it up and secured it in the Hallmark envelope, and just as I finished doing it ... my e-filing went through. At 11:51. No kidding. Is this some kind of sick joke? Well, either way, I'm not complaining ... the IRS will really miss my colorful envelope though!!
My taxes are done - and the Braves won - not a bad day after all!
2 comments:
That was a great story! I was totally laughing because I could just see that happening to me. Luckily I managed to get my taxes done early - of course it took like 2 months to figure them out with all this business stuff I have to worry about . . .
Oh and I saw on the news tonight that thousands of people had this same problem and the IRS understood and wouldn't count them as late! My dad said he had the same problem last night.
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