Ex Bibliotheca

The life and times of Zack Weinberg.

Sunday, 14 April 2002

# 10:15 PM

My 2001 income tax return comes to twelve (single-sided) pages of forms, including the somewhat exotic Form 2210 whose purpose is to explain to the IRS that I did not, in fact, underpay estimated taxes. The state tax return adds another five; they want a complete copy of the federal return plus some extras.

I had an interesting conversation with Shweta about why it is I don't use electronic filing. The most important reason, to me anyway, is that paper filing means that I can look over the forms and know exactly what's going into the envelope to be sent to the IRS. With electronic filing I would have to trust the tax program to do it right. (I already trust the tax program to fill out all the forms correctly, but it is much more likely that that part has been properly debugged. Also, I can do spot checks of the printout to make sure it's accurate.)