Pride Goeth

So when I was in law school, I took an elective class in tax law.  That was by far the most difficult class I had taken in my entire education career.  I know I didn't fail in the class, but I'll bet that I dropped it and have blocked out the memory.  All I remember is a very thick book with very tiny writing and being completely lost during the lecture.

And yet, I absolutely refuse to pay to have someone else do my taxes for me.  I am so stuborn about this even though my taxes have become more and more complicated over the years and for the past three years, I've received corrections from the IRS, because I've done them wrong. 

To be fair to my stuborn self, I do have a tax attorney in my firm who answers my questions and I am a college graduate.  I am bound and determined to squeeze every last possible benefit out of all the work and money I put into becoming a college graduate.  And it should be logical.  It is sort of logical.  All the forms are on the internet along with publications and I know how to read publications and make sense out of them.  Sort of.  Mostly.

But three years of mistakes--that's like strike three.  And now I have rental income.  There are professionals for this stuff for a reason.  When I see trusts and wills that people do on line, I want to cry about how much they don't know, they don't know.  So this year I was going to draw the line in the sand and make myself go see my friend who is a CPA who does mostly tax work.   I trust him completely and however much money I spend on his services, I am happy to pay him.

So I'll just put together some notes before I call him.  I started with the IRS web cite to find out what expense receipts I should be saving.  Oh look, I can deduct depreciation.  How do I figure that out.  Five hours and three publications later, I feel quite confident that I can do my own taxes again this year.

Uh oh.