You may think that Tax Day is April 15th. For many of us on the Acting Company tour, it’s today. This is our one true day off in New York since the beginning of December, and our next one isn’t until April 1. So this is the day that everyone has planned to do all the things one does at home — laundry, haircuts, and this time of year, taxes.
The most shocking thing about my taxes this year is that I only have four W-2’s. Normally I average about 10 employers a year. I take this as a good sign that I was able to work the entire year on just a couple jobs. I think I was unemployed for less than two months (less than half of May, and all of November).
Miraculously, I’m also getting money back this year, about $700. That basically never happens — one reason I think is because I tend to have a lot of little jobs, and little jobs tend to take out little taxes, without regard to what tax bracket your total income is going to put you in.
I still owed New York State $150, and owed Massachusetts $1. $1. I would love to know how much it will cost taxpayers to process my repayment of this shameful debt to the Commonwealth.
Anyway, I’m very happy, as that $700 will make it much easier to pay off my impending computer purchase that I really can’t afford to make just yet.
I did my taxes once again with TurboTax (in the last 2 years I’ve used the desktop version, not the website, because it allows you to fix more things manually). It went very smoothly this year, but I still hate that I have to file taxes for two states because they charge you $20 for an additional state, and then $20 to efile each state — so basically I pay $40 to say, “I made $xxxx.xx in Massachusetts,” which takes about a minute, and is probably the least complicated aspect of my taxes in general. I hate that. But I also hate dealing with taxes and money in general, so the less I have to interact with it and can screw it up, the better.
