Saturday, February 12, 2005

Man, my love affair with the Internet continues...

Yesterday morning, I was listening to NPR as I was getting ready for work and I heard the announcers interviewing someone from either the IRS or a representative of the company that makes TurboTax telling us NPR listeners that Turbotax allows filers to prepare their taxes for free and then only charged when a return is filed electronically.

Well, being the person who embraces technology with open arms, I went online last night and checked out the site. I'm going along and there are SO MANY COOL features. For instance, I was able to tell Turbotax my Fidelity Investments account numbers and it electronically retreived the information and took it into my tax calculations. An hour and a half later, I was sitting there all done and with a larger refund than I expected, I think due to the fact that I actually deducted all the charitable giving this year as well as educational credits for being a teacher as well as taking classes. In addition, my California returns were prepared as well. So, for $35 I filed my taxes.

Today, I got email confirmation that both my federal and state tax forms were accepted and I should be getting my refunds deposited directly into my checking account within a couple weeks! Man, I love the Internet.

Lame Ernie Move: So, as the Turbotax program is checking for errors, one of the things that I need to fix is a State ID code for a dividend I received. I punch in all the numbers I can find on my statements, none of them work. I call Fidelity and the representative tries to have me punch in another number. No go. I then try CA for the State ID code. It worked. Why didn't I just think of that in the first place?

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