valentine's day is an invention of the man.

i've been working on the taxes, and it's more complicated than it needs to be - as usual. it's not like i can't read instructions and fill in boxes, but the instructions include verbiage such as, "qualifying taxpayers" without providing the definition of qualifying. it's ridiculous, really, and i am convinced the forms are designed to keep h&r block in business. we don't have any investments or a second home or anything, so really, it should be simple: the difference between taxes paid and taxes owed. both paid & owed are based on wages, salary, tips. simple - until you get to the plethora of deductions and credits.

some expenses, such as education, you can choose whether to take a credit or a deduction, so you have to figure it both ways in case one way is better than the other. then there's things like that ginormous lawnmower we purchased. my old man paid for part of it with earnings from mowing lawns. if we state the earnings from mowing, we should also claim the lawnmower as a business expense. the mower cost more than the earnings, so it should be a wash or we should come out ahead. but to do this business stuff, do we need separate forms and schedules? and if so, is it worth the trouble? there's no way to know without filling out the forms.


the one time i did someone else's taxes, i nearly left off an important piece of schedule A deductions - the interest they'd paid on their house. they didn't ask me to do their taxes again. haha. yeah, but i think it was also b/c they didn't want me to know how much $$ they make. most folks i know pay some stranger to do their taxes, but those tax preparers just use software that walks them through the process. i am at least as smart as those folks and probably a lot smarter than most of them and it just chaps my jordache to pay someone to do something i know i can handle!

oddly, this sentiment does not extend to scrubbing toilets.