Monday, October 16, 2006

Tax Day

For most people I'm guessing tax day was a while ago back in April. Not us though, we got an extension, then waited until the very last minute to turn them in (today was the last day). Why did we do that? I really don't know, it's not like we owed money since we got a refund. But I can bet that wouldn't have stopped them from fining us had we not gotten them post marked by today. There was one good thing about all this. Since Ginger had to go to the post office, she bought me some of those superhero stamps while she was there. Woo!

In other news Grammy came up today and will be here through the week. The kids are pretty excited about it from what I can tell. It worked out well since I ended up staying late at work tonight and just barely got home in time to tell the kids goodnight as they were getting into bed.

And for today's pictures I have some shots from out back again. On Sunday I took a walkabout through the woods behind our house and tried to capture some of the leaves as they're changing colors. To be honest, I didn't get much in the way of foliage pictures simply because only a handful of trees have actually changed color to the point where they really stood out, and the ones that have the most drastic color changes aren't really picture accessible (usually they're surrounded by other trees that haven't changed color yet). But I was able to get some pictures of the creek that I think turned out pretty good. It was actually tough finding a clean area to take the photos. That's because even though this creek is a ways into the wood, it was pretty polluted (at least compared to the wooded area surrounding it). I was simply amazed by the sheer amount of garbage that I saw as I was walking along the creek. Plastic grocery bags seemed to be the worst offender and were all along the creek in various places. Makes me feel like I should go out and try and clean it up at some point.



3 comments:

Anonymous said...

In case you were wondering, an extension is an extension to file not an extension to pay. If taxes are due, you are charged interest from April 15 until you pay your taxes, and the IRS, may or may not, charge you penalties. Interest is mandatory, but penalties are discretionary/waivable.

Lesson: if you owe taxes, pay by April 15. If you don't have the money to pay the tax due, pay what you can and file for an extension.

Tip courtesy of an attorney with a Masters in tax law :)

Good thing you were due a refund!

JamesF said...

In case you were wondering...

I wasn't, but thanks. :-)

Although it does sound like I should talk to you at some point about what's the best way to handle some of this tax stuff in the future. Which I'm sure you were offering to give free advice by chiming in, right?

I think we knew we were getting a refund when we filed for the extension. In the past though, we haven't seen the refund as it usually ends up going to pay estimated taxes.

JamesF said...

That'll teach me to be a smartass.

Ginger has informed me that I'm once again incorrect (she really should be an editor for this blog as much as she contributes after I post). We apparently filed for an extension because we didn't have all of the paperwork associated with some investments. Although that doesn't explain then why we waited until the last possible minute to file since as you point out, had we owed money, we would have been paying for all that extra time. Hopefully our tax accountant knew that we weren't going to owe money and that's why everything got pushed back with no apparent rush.