Taxes

I completed my 2005 taxes today, I usually take a day off from work to do them, but this year they were fairly easy despite the job change. I do them by hand, I don't buy tax preparation software. The $20 or so for Taxcut or TurboTax or others stuck in my craw when I was filling out the 1040EZ, because it was so easy. Doing my taxes manually was a challenge, and it became interesting to me to understand exactly how they were calculated. I download the Adobe Acrobat fill-in forms from the IRS site, and save them electronically. I use an Excel spreadsheet to do the math. My taxes have gradually become more complex, with itemized deductions now that I have a mortgage, and capital gains and estimated taxes and interest and dividends and alternative minimum taxes.

I adjusted my withholding downward at El Paso last year, because I overpaid the previous year by about $2600 (I bought my house in 2004). The only way to do this was to increase my number of deductions (I think I had to claim 7 instead of just myself, there's a calculator on the IRS site). I didn't do this when I got to Enbridge, though, and I ended up overpaying by about $2200 this year. No more interest-free loans to the government this year, I'm going to adjust my withholding on Monday.