death and taxes

By anders pearson 01 Apr 2001

i just wasted the last two hours trying to do my taxes online. i gave up eventually because the site was so frigging slow and poorly done. i’m on a fast connection but i had to wait a good 2 minutes for each page to download. and it just went on and on. i don’t have any stocks or bonds or other weird crap going on; i have one job; i’m single; no dependents; no weird deductions. it ought to take no time at all to do my taxes. but i had to go through answering one question at a time (almost always answering ‘no’ because i didn’t fit into some bizarre category (no, i’m not a nun, i don’t generate my own electricity using an alternative power source, and no, i’m not an independant llama farmer)) waiting 2 minutes each time for the next stupid question to come up so i could say no to it too.

what i’d like to see is ‘taxes for average people.’ it would have a form where you enter your name, check if you’re single or married, and enter your credit card. then the next page is a form that mirrors a standard W-2 that you just fill in the boxes with the info from your regular W-2. at this point, you can either let it calculate stuff and be done with it, or go on and answer other questions if you do happen to have a more complicated situation.

and just when i was getting really despondant and fed up with the whole thing i learned that even suicide wouldn’t get me out of doing my taxes. damn. there goes that idea.