Done

With our taxes, that is. It is the first time I have had to do them in years. Now before you go and report me to the Treasury Department, there is a reason. As part of Chizz's overseas assignment, they provided someone to do our taxes for us. Expat taxes are fairly complicated, foreign income, 2 bank accounts, taxes in your home country, credit for taxes in the new country etc. It is all pretty much above my head. So for the past few years including a few after we got back, they did our taxes for us. This year we were on our own, which meant I was on my own.

Usually our taxes are fairly straight forward but this year we had a little issue with one of our investments (don't I sound like Warren Buffet?). And even though the monetary amount of this investment was pretty small, making sure I did it correctly on my taxes took 2 days of research and calls to both the IRS and Franchise Tax Board. And even then, I am not so sure. But I did it and time will tell, if the IRS and Franchise Tax Board agree that I did it correctly or if I didn't, whether they really care.

Usually I am a last minute filer even if we aregetting money back. Now not usually a-driving-up-to-the-post-office-at-midnight-on-April-15 kind of late but in a normal situation, I probably wouldn't have sat down until this weekend to do our taxes. But on Saturday we are leaving to go college touring with Snake to Washington DC and Philadelphia. Snake doesn't leave for college for another year and a half, but we are trying to get some ideas of schools he would like. Since right now he is convinced that college for him will be out of our state, and somewhere near a big city but not in Florida or anywhere else in the South, we are trying out some big cities and colleges to see if anything looks interesting.

So off we go. It is probably a good idea to do this early. Before you know it, Snake will be off to college and I will have to start my federal prison term if the IRS and Franchise Tax Board don't agree with my assessment of our tax situation. See, now I sound like Bernie Madoff.