of taxation and conferences
April 14th, 2009. The mad, final push to finish filling out my federal and (two) state income tax forms. I finish. Submit. It gets rejected for my husband typing in his ss# incorrectly. Funny, in that he cannot recall the number assisgned to identify him.
All in all, we “broke even” this year– we owed the federal government $6, Illinois claimed $360ish (I forgot to write it down in my checkbook, and am not willing to look it up at this moment), and New York is giving us back $420ish. Every year, at tax time, I vow to pay someone to do it next year. And every year, when tax time rolls around again, I do it myself. It’s fun to see what kind of silly loopholes exist for people who buy _____ (insert: windmills, electric cars, medical equipment), and sad to see what kind of huge medical expenses you have to put out before you get any credit. Medical expenses hold much more interest for me since my husband transitioned from student to unemployed–we pay ~$200/month (hmm–insert direct withdrawal of $800 for medical expenses over the last 4 months) for the assurance that if a bus hits my husband, or he falls off his bike, or some other horrid thing happens, someone will help us pay 80% of our bills. After we dish out a minimum of $1000. We find ourselves in the statistical category of the chronically underinsured, as paying that 20% would probably wipe out all of our savings in a matter of moments, but we can not afford more. At least we think we can’t. However, we choose to afford what we do buy, for $2400/year, which is peace of mind. I miss the days when I worked for a NFP with fabulous health insurance, and look forward to returning to such a situation some time. In the meantime, this moment of scarcity has moved my political views left, and made me wonder why my government does not acknowledge our efforts to avoid further burdening the US taxpayer.
We paid the USPS $6.99 (credit) to send in our various state returns via certified mail.
In other news, I paid Penn State $165 for the privelege of coming to partake in the currency of an academic conference. It appears that some small amount of fiscal capital is necessary to participate in the exchange of academic capital, after all, one cannot attend without finding a place to sleep, a way to get there, and a fee to get in.