Take that April 15

The IRS people will be very happy with me.

I finished my taxes today.

I've been putting it off for about a month. I get all the documents by the beginning of February and then I figure, what's the rush? I don't hurry to get them done. So when I had an afternoon of nothing looming ahead of me, I figured now was a good time to sit myself down and fill in the numbers. From start to finish, they took me about an hour, not too awful.

Since I don't use the paper and pencil method to do my taxes, it really wasn't hard at all. I didn't have to struggle over what numbers to put on what lines and if I should subtract line 34 from line 26 or if I should be subtracting line 26 from line 34. For the second year, I used Tax Cut, a tax software program, that tells me where to put what numbers and then does all the math for me. And since math isn't my strong point, I was more than willing to let a computer program calculate all the numbers and figure out the damage.

While the IRS people will be happy that I filed my taxes over a month before the April deadline, they probably won't be as happy when they have to write out the big fat refund check I'm supposed to get.