Dr. Phil's Dreamwidth Journal

Ides of April Eve. We finished our taxes last night. E-filed Federal, accepted in minutes. State return mailed this morning. Done.

Even before I bought TurboTax Deluxe 2014 (DW) (LJ), as I have for many years, there were issues, which I reported on the TurboTax Survey at the end:

We've used TurboTax every year since we bought a house around 20 years ago. Actually was probably the least painful ever this year. -- But...This year there was a glitch with the issue of removing Schedule C from TurboTax Deluxe, which was a problem for someone with minimal business income. I understand it will be resolved for TurboTax Deluxe 2015.

As I mentioned in the link above, Intuit blinked -- and not only did the Home and Business upgrade cost us nothing, it took like five seconds, so I suspect by the time I downloaded TurboTax Deluxe 2014, they already had the code in and only had to unlock it. Next year, in Schedule C!

The writing business? As nonexistent as 2013 (DW) (LJ). Let's be realistic here. In 2013 I was hospitalized for 5½ months, in 2014 a week. Plus I spent six weeks of prime Summer 2014 on at-home IVs twice a day, and five times a week hyperbaric oxygen (HBO) chamber sessions where I was allowed no paper and no electrical devices a couple of hours a day. So there was a lot of time-in-chair which was not possible.

Still, I have been amazed at how much writing I did get done. Hell, I wrote a 17,000 word novelette on the touch screen keyboard of a Kindle Fire HD while in hospital 2013. Three or four really good stories were written, plus a couple of very good revisions. No sales, but several got close and at least one is still sitting on an editor's desk. Then there's the 320,000+ words written on the big YA project since September -- can't sell what is neither done nor sufficiently quite in shape to even ship partials to editors. Not at this stage in my career.

So I am perfectly pleased with my writing the last two years, even if I have generated no sales. My submission numbers are way down, too. For reasons. See above.

It may be a new year, but the refrain is the same as tax years 2012 and 2013:

2012: Michigan wants everyone to e-file, too, but Yet Again they just don't get it -- e-filing the state return costs $19.99 versus the cost of two stamps, you can see where I'm going with this one.

2013: We don't E-file Michigan. We could, but TurboTax would charge $24.95 -- four sheets of paper and a check and a stamp cost a helluva lot less. In TY 2012, Michigan got rid of a lot of allowable charitable deductions, especially public TV and radio, so we went from getting a modest refund to paying a small amount. Bastards.

The nonsense with state e-filing is going in the wrong direction. And in the past three tax years, we've had to pay Michigan $84, $70 and $71 since they got rid of the state charitable giving, so I'm feeling even less inclined to spend $25 instead of an envelope, four pieces of paper and a stamp. No matter how much Michigan pleads it wants us to e-file state returns because "it's easier". Guess what, sunshine, if it's so damn easy why do I have to pay so damn much? (And is that money to the state or TurboTax? I don't really care... fix the problem, guys.)

We are done here. Til next year!

Dr. Phil

Posted on Dreamwidth
Crossposted on LiveJournal

As Others Rush To Work On Taxes

TurboTax Deluxe has done its work again, saying that the Feds have accepted our e-filed return, so our refund will eventually come. (Michigan wants everyone to e-file, too, but Yet Again they just don't get it -- e-filing the state return costs $19.99 versus the cost of two stamps, you can see where I'm going with this one.) That means it's time for this year's version of How My Writing Business Is Doing (DW).

The good news is that once again, the business made a profit. It was down to $135, but it makes sense given the income stream. The movie option on "The Brother on the Shelf" (Analog May 2009) was renewed again, but wasn't actually paid in 2012. There were four publications during the year: "End Run" at GigaNotoSaurus, "The New Tenant" in Rocket Science / edited by Ian Sales, "The Once and Future Tomato" in Neo-opsis, "Brooding in the Dark" at Interstellar Fiction, plus "Your First Real Rocket Ship" won Third Prize in the Friends of the Merril Short Story Contest and briefly appeared in English on their website.

Michigan -- Sigh

Nearly the entire time we've been in Michigan, except for some early year(s) in the U.P., we've gotten a refund. Not this year. Nothing really changed on our end, our legislature decided to get rid of some tax credits. The ones that allowed you to take off some money by donating to public works that they didn't want to fund like public radio and TV, community foundations, food banks. We continued to support those operations, but ended up owing $84.

Dr. Phil

Gray and Damp

At 12:30 the radio was saying we were having freezing rain turning to snow, accumulation about an inch, as part of a winter storm advisory until 1pm. Maybe for Grand Rapids, but halfway to Lake Michigan not only was there no rain, freezing or thawed, or snow, but for a brief moment full sun burst out of the overcast skies. One thing about living by a Great Lake, weather is wildly local.

Next snow possibility is New Year's Eve Eve, i.e. tomorrow evening -- we'll see.

Year End Bills

One of the last things I do each year is renew my professional memberships -- American Physical Society, American Chemical Society and the American Association of Physics Teachers -- as well as renew subscriptions to The Chronicle of Higher Education and PC World, and donate to Northwestern and Michigan Tech. Doing most of these online has become relatively easy. I didn't even have to open the society statements.

Why wait to batch these all at the end of the year? Because I can write them on the same page in my check register so they'll be all together when I do my taxes. Yeah, have to think about taxes again. Plus I get to do Wendy's and will have to wade through the Georgia forms, too. Or at least the screens in TurboTax.

Time Sinks

Still taking time to make phone calls and otherwise deal with Wendy's finances. While online billpaying may be convenient when you're alive, I don't have access to her email statements, so have to wait for paper bills to get generated and forwarded. Oh the electric bill isn't a bill but a check for a buck-and-a-half refund on her final bill? Oh that's amusing. And unexpectedly different.

And the two days I spent coming aboard Dreamwidth as LiveJournal rolled over everyone with their misguided Release 88 rollout was time and expense that I hadn't planned for, dammit.

But "I'm not complaining."™

Really?

Haven't written about gas prices much this fall. Guess not having to buy gas every two days pushed it a bit off the radar -- and on long road trips you just pay whatever it is. Gas on Tuesday was $3.27.9/gal for regular -- today just two days later it was $3.48.9/gal. 21¢ in 48 hours? Okay, I suppose the jabbering about the Strait of Hormuz makes oil speculators nervous. But there was also a report that the U.S. is a net exporter of refined gasoline -- refineries are struggling against a drop in U.S. demand. So much for all the commuting done by all the jobs created by the rich people after years of the Bush tax cuts... (cynical grin)

Writing

Too early to close out the year or even the sabbatical, but travels and holidays are hell on the writing. But in the last two days I've shipped four stories. Saturday I hope to get a new story written for WOTF while watching Northwestern and other Big Ten teams play bowl games -- or punt and send an older story if I don't finish by 10-11pm. (calculating grin)

Holidays

It's Thursday? Huh. Every day seems like Saturday. Have to keep up with the day of the week, though, in order to not run out of 2011 for tax purposes or miss getting our last couple of weeks of garbage out to the road. At least I'm caught up with the newspapers.

Getting a certain amount of reading done. TV has been an inconsistent mess. And the news channels started in on the Year in Review stuff before Christmas and now it's all Iowa Caucuses All The Time.

How are your holiday leftovers?

Dr. Phil

It's The Same Everywhere

The nation is busy on a budget cutting spree from the national level to the local townships. The economic meltdown and high unemployment means that tax revenues are down everywhere. And while the economy is doing a few rumblings of recovery, there are still plenty of people and industries and communities in difficulty. Into this environment, the conservative swing in government is in part taking the form of swinging the budget cutting axes.

As For Michigan...

The November 2010 elections swept in Republican control of the state house, senate and governor's mansion. While that doesn't mean an automatic pass on any legislation, the good news is that I expect there to be a lot less fighting to come up with something that can be passed -- though the jury is still out as to whether the One Tough Nerd new governor will sign just anything out of the state legislature.

Rick Snyder's first budget was supposed to have been announced about half an hour ago, though the details were given to news organizations late last night.

It sounds like there will be a 3-4% cut in school support and a 15% cut in state university support. The latter sounds like a lot, and it's not chump change, but it isn't quite the bad news that it looks like.

First, state support of the universities has been either declining or holding even for years, so that the state part of the universities budgets has been steadily dwindling. Second, I'm not sure if this includes the moratorium on (most) new construction projects. That's already sent the universities scrambling to raise donor funds for their building projects and so is a known issue.

I'm sure some of the universities will deal with this tightening of the money spigot better than others. I'm expecting that WMU will still be needing to teach courses even in the face of belt tightening, so I am assuming for the moment that I will have work beyond the end of April.

It's not a time to panic. Yet. And a budget is at this stage merely a proposal.

We'll see.

Dr. Phil

Doing Taxes

Have done Phase I (the usual job and home stuff) and Phase II (Dr. Phil's writing business) in TurboTax Deluxe. Just Phase III (State) to do. We've been using TurboTax since we bought the house. Every year it's slightly different, but every year it imports the previous year's return so we have categories for all the same charitable deductions and business expenses, etc., which is a huge time saver.

I Made Money in 2008

With two big pro sales paid in 2008, "A Man in the Moon" to WOTF XXIV and "The Brother on the Shelf" to Analog, and expenses for postage and two cons, ConFusion in January 2008 and WindyCon in November 2008, I actually made a profit of $159 on my short story writing for 2008. According to my Schedule C.

Woo-hoo!

Time For The Big Time

So I guess I got to get serious about getting my novel projects going and start earning those "big author bucks". (sn*rt) It's not to late to make some money for 2009. (grin) There's even a few payments which were made since January 1st, so I've already had 2009 writing income.

Is this the fun part? Are we having fun yet?

Dr. Phil