I'm done, but I didn't make it under the wire by very much. I use Turbo Tax, as doing it by hand would be intolerable (think of the AMT alone, or for that matter leaving one item out of adjusted gross income and then, once one finds it, having to do umpteen calculations all over again).
Kind of an unpleasant process, haunted by fear that I am forgetting something, and subject to the usual feelings of being glad to get a refund or sad to still owe $$ even though in principle only the total paid really matters (leaving aside the time value of money on the one hand and penalties for under-paying on the other).
Turbo Tax appears to have screwed up this year by not automatically dealing with New York State estimated tax for next year. Had to do that myself. I am not well inclined towards them in any event, given their odious behavior in the Ready Return fight in California (where they raised bogus arguments to help kill a program that would have given Californians for free, at a state government cost of pennies, a set of services that Intuit would rather sell for $50).
Yes, it's unpleasant not knowing whether one is a fool or a knave. Discussion of tax theory rarely takes into account the feeling -- as one of my private practice clients recently put it -- "I looked at the return. It's so damn complicated it's hard for me to evaluate."
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