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Tuesday, April 15, 2008

April 15 - The dreaded day is here

Always a downer for me. It was April 15 that I delivered Seth, stillborn. It still haunts me because that little baby appeared to be perfect, except he didn't breathe. Full-term and complete without apparent defects of any kind. They never did find the reason for it so it's obviously something beyond what this world understands.

Then, to do taxes! I seem to always procrastinate this because I hate it so much. Too much math I guess and numbers intimidate me, especially with the undertones of threatened audit if you mess up. By the way, we don't reach Tax-free day until next Monday (the day we finally have paid our taxes, starting with Jan 1 and after this time we get to start keeping our earnings).

On a positive note, after two very bad attempts at online free programs for filing, I finally found one that really was easy. Had I started here it would not have been so distressing for me. FreeTaxUSA is the one to use! If there are any procrastinators reading this, go to www.irs.gov first and get to the free sites from there to be sure you don't get charged for it as you might if you go directly to their own site.

This year I messed up and didn't use up my Flex spending dollars so I lost quite a bit of money on that gamble. This is one of my pet peeves with the government. It's good to get to use pre-tax dollars for medical expenses but it requires betting on how much you think you will need in the coming year for unforeseen as well as expected medical costs. I didn't have as much as I expected but should have done some last minute shopping at least.

So, as I was doing taxes (last night; not today@!) I came to the gambling loss section and thought this should qualify as such a loss - the government requires this form of gambling if you want the tax benefit. Of course if it is a legitimate medical expense and pre-tax money can be used, shouldn't it be good no matter when you use it? "Use or lose" is nuts and since the administrator gets to keep the leftovers, what incentive do they have to really get your reimbursement to you. Jenn and Fred had a horrible administrator of their plan a year ago and they had to jump through all kinds of hoops, submitted expenses and yet were denied hundreds of dollars in reimbursements. It was very suspicious and the winner in the end was the administrator of the program. Hmmmmmm, what's wrong with this picture?

2 comments:

  1. I'm sorry, Mom. I wish I knew what to say... never have known what to say on this day. Hope you're doing alright...

    Good luck with the taxes!!!

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  2. Such sad days to remember:( Eric's birthday would have been last Friday and I have been kind of bummed all week too. That hurt always remains doesn't it?

    And I agree on the flexible spending plan. It drives me crazy keeping track of all that.

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