Wednesday, March 04, 2009

Things taxing and assessing

I learned something about my taxes. I’d thought I was all set to go to get started on them. I was going to go out and get Turbo Tax and do them last weekend. It didn’t happen that way. I realized I needed to find out the interest I had on the two accounts I get interest on. Here’s the thing if you earn under $10 of interest the bank isn’t obliged to send you the appropriate tax form so you can report it.

On Monday I called the IRS up. I have to say it did'nt take very long to get through to a person. A nice change of pace. It was interesting that each person you talked to gave them your name and their id number. I guess the idea is you need to write them down so you can say this is who you talked to. I talked to a very nice and helpful woman. She asked me a series of questions. It ends up that I need to report the interest even though I don’t have a form telling me how much interest I received. Seems some what catch-22y.

Anyway one bank I had no problems getting the amount. I just went on line and in my account summary was 2008 interest. The other account I have is with ING. I always seem to have problems getting into the ING site. I’m hoping it won’t be the case this time.

The other thing of note and interest is that the housing bubble is now hitting home. It’s hitting my home to be exact. I got my tax assement for 2009 and the assessed value of my home went down 10% this year. Of course I don’t think my taxes went down the corresponding 10% but they aren’t all that high to begin with. I have to say the assessed value has soared over the past five years so I’m not all that worried.

I just hope it doesn’t happen again next year.

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