Clear!

...and I'm clear! Taxes are in. With HOURS to spare. Wondering what all the rush was about now.

Seriously folks, I'm ready for a tea party. This tax system is just nuts. This is just the calm before the storm. If the "Bush Tax Cuts" expire in 2010 we'll be looking back at 2007 tax rates and complexity as "the good old days."

At one point I had a $28K gap between an item reported on my W-2 and a calculation on Sched D. Yikes! The "amount owed" ticker was long gone in the wrong direction and showed no signs of coming back toward Zero. Must. Breath.

Between me banging my head, praying like a man on a sinking ship and generally knotting up in the stomach, I managed to find an input error I'd made.

Any of you use Turbo Tax (tm)? Then you know how they put that little $ counter in the upper left corner. That little window keeps track of a) what you owe or b) what you will get back as a rebate. In my case, it usually starts as a big number owed. Then as I input additional income info from 1099's it just keeps growing from there. It seemed like an eternity before it started counting back down today.

Tonight I start selling at least one of my 4 kids on a CPA career.