stop freaking out

fact: according to the CDC on average, 5%-20% of the population of the united states is infected with the flu each year. the regular flu, not swine flu. 200,000 people are hospitalized from flu complication and 36,000 people die. again, the regular type of flu, not swine flu.

fact: the swine flu outbreak of 1976 killed 1 person. 1 person died in 1988 after she "visited a county fair swine exhibition where there was widespread influenza-like illness among the swine."

fact: you cannot get swine flu from eating pork.

fact: swine flu is treatable with the same drugs used to treat the regular flu.

fact: the transmission of the flu virus from humans to pigs is a bigger problem than vice versa.

do yourself a favor. listen carefully to the media and what they are actually saying. have they told you that swine flu is more deadly than the regular flu? have they told you that it is more contagious than the regular flu? have they told you that it is not treatable? no. so now that you armed with some actual facts, stop freaking the fuck out.

well i'm glad that's over

after spending 20 minutes in line at the post office this morning, it's over (knock on wood). getting the taxes done this year was possibly one of the worst experiences of my life.

since the last post on the topic, i called the md comptroller myself to find out what the correct forms were to file. turns out these guys filled out the wrong form for me. good thing i checked, because they obviously didn't bother and i would have sent in the wrong paperwork. after i told them that, i actually had to tell them what day the maryland taxes were due. they thought it was may 1st. eventually, they sent me a version of the correct form, of course it was filled out incorrectly.

i ended up taking the day off of work yesterday to do them myself. i sat down with a pencil and printed the forms and the instructions and did them by hand. i called the accounting office several times throughout the day and not once did they call me back. finally, when i finished doing them by hand, i drove over to the accountants office and laid into them. the owner was such a dickhole he wouldn't even turn around to acknowledge me when i walked in. he told me that they "have done 75 personal tax returns" and that i was "the only one who ever complained" and that he found it hard to believe that they were doing it wrong, implying that i must not know what i'm talking about. it was ugly, but i'm getting my money back (the owner claimed he was too busy to stop and write me a check at that time, but whatever). with any luck, my refund checks will be the last i will ever see of our 2008 taxes.

for the record, the accounting firm is Accounting Solutions Network, PLC and their url is http://arlingtoncpas.com. stay away. far far away.

final score:
md refund ~$500
va refund ~$1300
federal refund ~$1000
accountant fee refund $540

lousy accountant update

i still have no answer from the accountant regarding the proper forms to file in MD, however i did have a chance to look over the numbers on the return she filled out for us and we should be getting back at least $700 instead of owing $290. at this point, the service i am getting is bordering on criminal.

to recap:

taxes as done by account, we owe $522
taxes after corrected by dan, we get ~$3100

criminal. i will be calling the owners next week to get my money back.

how do you make $600/hr?

get a bad tax accountant.

so this year laura and i decided to have our taxes done by a "professional" due to the retardedly complicated nature of tax code and our situation this year. we dropped off all our paper work near the end of february. i called after three weeks to check on them and they hadn't even looked at them yet but got right on it after i called. we went in a day or two later to pick up the returns.

i was quite disappointed to find out we owed money because in my previous attempt to do them on taxcut i had thought i was getting ~$2k refunded. they told us we owed $974 in federal taxes, we were getting back $873 from maryland and owed $421 to the state of virgina - all in all we owed $522. a quick look over the return and a few questions later i realized they had not included quite a few things, for example one stock transaction which was a loss of about $450 had no purchase price and was therefore listed on my taxes as a short term capital gain. i told her about a few other issues and emailed her some more records later in the week.

i went back last night at 6pm, straight from work, hoping to find a completed tax return but alas, it was not to be. i stayed there until nearly 11pm pointing out mistake after mistake after mistake. and it was really weird stuff, like negative numbers listed as amounts for charitable donations. by the time all was said and done, we had gone from owing $522 to getting a net refund of $2403.

to top things off, after all that, we had to pay the accountant $540 to do our taxes. and the worst part, i'm still not convinced it's correct. since now somehow we now owe maryland money instead of getting a refund, and are getting refunds from virginia and the feds instead of owing.