Tax Time

Okay, so I've had all my important tax forms ready for at least a month, but today I just found the strength to get started on my tax return. I knew that there would be no way that I would get over $7000 back like I did last year... that was just a fluke due to some crazy taxes on a bonus I received and selling my house. And, now that I'm out of the military this year, I was sure that I would have to fork over some dough to the IRS.

Anyways, I had never really had problems trying to figure out capitol gains on the buying and selling of stocks, until now. One of my stocks split, then that company was bought out, the buying company set up a deal that gave me a little more than half of the worth of my stock in cash and the other portion in shares of their companies stock. This wouldn't have been too hard, but the deal left me with a partial share of their stock, and since you can't have those, of course, my brokerage company sold it. This meant that I had to figure out my cost basis on the stock that was bought out for the $300 or so and stock, and the cost basis of the nearly six-tenths of a share of stock... and the worst part was I had to split it into 3 separate transactions because I had bought 4 of my 10 shares less than 1 year ago. Mannnnnn! I've never been so frustrated, and I didn't even sell any stocks for this reason, but somehow I get stuck figuring this junk out, yet again. I'm so glad I paid some attention in my Accounting class in college, the whole FIFO thing wasn't difficult to understand.

At least it's all over, and I'm getting a rebate. I found out that my refunds were high while in the Navy because I must've forgotten (or they forgot) to update my W-4 after I got married, so they kept taking out a cubic truck-load of taxes because they had me as single, then I would get most, if not all of it, back come tax time. Now, I've got my deductions up-to-date and I'm glad that I get a little money back... plus don't forget that nice little rebate in May... sweet!!! I might actually do what the government wants me to do with the rebate check and put it right back into our economy, we really need new carpet, or fix our deck, or fix the heating/cooling, or you get the picture, but we'll see. Anything can happen.