Work on taxes

A variety of weather today: sun, wind, calm, clouds, rain, sun, calm, wind, rain... over and over. The high temperature was in the mid 50s F so I had a fire going in my wood stove for warmth in the house.

Late afternoon, from the house, I seen Wyatt pulling a plow behind his big green tractor across his sister's field south of my pasture. After doing nothing to the field last year whereby the weeds grew and grew, it appears he may plow them under. I'll wander over for a look tomorrow.

Otherwise today was "work on taxes" day. It is nice we have a couple extra days this year. I make much less money but my taxes are more complicated what with farm forms, depreciation, energy credit, HSA, IRA, and telephone tax rebate forms.

Last week (See, I didn't wait till the last day! ) I've stopped at the local IRS office who then put me on the phone to the central IRS call center. The local office does not answer any depreciation tax form questions. The center call center wasn't much help as they tended to read me the instructions from the IRS booklet (I can do that! ) and then tell me they weren't trained much on that tax form.

Later when I called the 1-800 IRS number the automated phone system hung up after saying the call volumes were high. The system wouldn't even add me to the call waiting queue. When I complained I was told the phone call waiting queue is real short.

With all the forms I need lots of extra postage on my envelope this year. And yes, I owe money to Uncle Sam.

I bought a printer for my computer. I've had this computer over a year and had no printer. But with all my tax forms I needed a way to print them off. I got a Canon MP600 printer. For the last few weeks I have been checking printers out a various stores, then reading up on them on the internet, then checking new printers out, and so on. I avoided HP printers due to my brother and other friends past hassles and expense with their ink cartridges. I wanted an inexpensive printer (as I hardly print anything) but one with individual ink cartridges. I compromised in the middle: individual cartridges and not so cheap (but cheaper as it was on sale this week).