Tax Time...at least for me!

So, it's February...and for me, that means it is time to get cracking and get my taxes done. I have never been one of those people who leaves them to the last minute and is up at midnight...pulling my hair out...on April 14th. My dad..surprising...usually ends up being one of those people. He usually does everything early, so that always catches me by surprise. He keeps everything up to date in terms of finances with a bunch of excel worksheets and I think he even uses a budget software of some sort, etc...so his taxes should be easy as pie. This year it might be a smidge more complicated because of my mom passing away, but I am not sure.

My taxes are pretty easy. I don't own property and what not, so it is just the standard return. I do it online because it is simple and easy and you get your return so much faster. I had to wait for a couple of my W-2s and some of my interest statements to be ready, but now I believe I have everything. I went through and quickly did the federal return to see what it would look like. I didn't file it, but just entered the information...and wanted to see where I was at. I was worried that I was either going to get little to no return or might even have to pay...because I had a bunch of untaxed income I had to deal with. I have my Americorps money...which is great because I paid off a bunch of money on my student loans, but now not so great because I now have to pay taxes on it. Plus, I still have a little income from when I worked at the video store...and they never take taxes out. Plus, income from interest accounts and another side job. So, that's a lot of money NOT being taken out for taxes. I did set up my main job to have extra money taken out for taxes, but I wasn't sure it would be enough.

When I plugged the numbers in for the federal...it shows me getting a return. It's not a huge amount of money, but heck...I am just glad I am not going to owe them anything. I haven't done the NY State one yet and for that one, I am pretty sure I might end up in the owe column, but hopefully not a lot. I plan on getting all the paperwork together and officially doing my taxes this week. Cross your fingers for me...that the state doesn't kill me. *winks*