I still consider myself a newlywed -- 20 months later. Although the first year was peppered with adjustments and learning experiences, recently I had begun to feel that my husband and I were really starting to "gel".
That is, until tax season rolled around this year.
My husband Mark and I dated many years before marrying, but I found that living together a whole new ball game. I pressured myself to do everything -- cook, clean, laundry, grocery shopping -- because this was what my mother had done in our house. I was learning to cook by trial and error, and fighting an overwhelming desire to throw all the dirty socks I found on the floor right into the garbage can. My plate was much too full since I was also working full time. So my husband, Mark, and I decided to divide the chores even though he is not "domestically inclined".
We found ways to make our lives easier-including sending out our laundry, doing grocery shopping on the Internet, and I even found a less stressful job.
Mark owns a mail order computer business and I am an accountant, therefore it seemed logical that I should help him with his bookkeeping and taxes. Except for one thing: I had never done taxes by myself before. How embarrassing, here I was a CPA and every year I trotted my return off to H&R Block. But this year would be different; we would file a joint return.
I took a class in tax preparation. Unfortunately, my professor preferred to spend the class reminiscing about old clients of his, recounting war stories and kicking himself about why all his clients had left him. It wasn't much of a learning experience. Still, I thought to myself, how difficult could taxes be? I would just follow what was done on last year's tax return1x
I soon found myself spending countless hours in front of our computer every night after work, giving myself an ulcer with thoughts like, "I hope I'm doing this right", "What if we get audited?" I also was amazed at the volume of the IRS tax code. I began to feel a migraine coming on as I printed out the S Corporation tax form from the
. It was twenty-eight pages long -- and that was just the instructions. Then there was my tax software. It was written in an interview format, with question after question: "Have you sold your primary residence this year?" "Do you qualify for the home office deduction?" After doing the first draft of the joint return I wanted to ask the software, "How are we going to pay for this?"
That was the real kicker: Filing jointly seemed to have an additional tax liability. "I never had to pay this much when I filed single1x" my husband lamented. The next night Mark came home and found me lying on the couch in my pajamas. I had worked myself into such a frenzy over the March 15th corporate tax return deadline that I had to call in sick at work. He announced, "Okay I think the only way we can save on our taxes is if we have a kid or buy a house." "Okay I don't want either one of those things," I answered without batting an eye. "I might be thirty years old but my biological clock is out of order. Besides, even if I got pregnant it takes nine months before we could claim the deduction1x" The one thing that I thought could be so mind boggling it would take my mind off my early mid-life crisis, was actually stirring it up again1x
"Did you know that you can get a credit for making a donation towards the restoration of a barn in New York State?" I asked him coyly. "Did you restore any barns this year? Oh, wait1x Did you invest in any research for solar powered cars?1x"
"You should know how to do this, you're an accountant1x" he bantered. "Maybe we should file separately," I retorted. Now, there's an idea, I thought. Upon further investigation, I found that couples get penalized for doing this with lower deductions and exemptions.
I am glad that tax season is coming to a close. I am forced to conclude that unless the tax code is simplified, an ideal husband is not just one who remembers your birthday, or washes the dishes (willingly), but one whose W-2 won't give you agita or send you into the next tax bracket1x
