Big Month

After a truly stellar break, that barely felt like I deserved it (take a week off after logging 7 weeks, sure, I really worked up a sweat), we are back to our normal lives again.  It was nice to be distracted from real life with a week of baby giggles and copious holiday food.  Not that my job is stressful, far from it.  But our real life is starting to feel complicated.  I told Matt the other day, I have three primary worries: 1) Moving out of our house.
2) Getting our Mortgage and closing
3) Paying my taxes (complicated this year by 3 jobs and a business license)
Any of these things is really no big deal, it's the all-at-the-same-time-ness of it that worries me a bit.  Moving isn't really a complex problem, just a big investment of time and energy.  The mortgage should go as planned, but I am told it is normal for delays of up to a week.  And a week delay would be complete chaos for us.  That feels a little like a time bomb that may or may not go off- and it seems related to complicated financial thingies I don't really understand that well.

And then there are taxes.  As a small business owner coming up on  my first taxes season, I have NO idea what I am doing except that I certainly owe someone a LOT of money.  I sat down with a tax professional a couple months ago to reassure myself I was setting aside enough money (~35%), and confirmed who I would be paying (just the Feds and the state of WA).  Now it is that time to pay them.  Washington has been sending me friendly reminders that NOW would be a great time to pay my taxes.  Ha.  Now, when all my money is supposed to be carefully observed by underwriters.  Nice.

After some deliberation, I beleive only my WA taxes are due Jan 31. Actually, that sentence makes the whole experience sound fairly composed.  After several sleepless nights, much internet research a a couple of closets cleaned on nervous energy, I've figured out how to pay my federal taxes, and realized I need to wait for ALL my W2s to come in.  But, WA keeps reminding me that I need to pay THEM by Jan 31.  Ack! 

I compiled my gross earnings (which I had started for the mortgage, so that was less horrifying than I predicted), and continued to research online.  The Department of Revenue (DOR) has an overly friendly series of videos about "How do I pay my taxes?" and "When are my taxes due?" that were both informative and infuriating.  The DOR has forms that can help you do all kinds of things, like calculate the taxes rates and even a percent.  But then they use some very cryptic categories to describe the types of businesses that get taxes at each rate.  With the help of a piece of pie, I decided my business (editing) counts a service.  Not retail, or publishing which are different tax rate.  Ok, 1.8% tax of my gross income- I owe somebody like $500. The pieces are starting to come together.

I go to file online, since the DOR has calculators they trust, and I am hoping I can use my current paypal balance to pay off the state without messing up my credit report.  I checked all the tax credits I could select, but I am not doing "High Tech" or "Utilities" work, and I don't want to get on anyone's Audit List by getting creative. I'm just providing business services and trying to be a good citizen. So, click, click, click, and taxes filed.  The confirmation pages says "no taxes are due at this time...." and I save this.

And then I think, if they aren't due now, when are they do?  And where do I send this cash? So I looked a little more closely at that confirmation page. Wait, some of those numbers are positive... and the total number is zero?  What?  It is supposed to be $500.  And then I notice "0720 Service & Other SBC" Credit negating the total I thought I owed.  Wha....?  I've got a cold sweat, now.  Did I hit something wrong?  I am just trying to do the right thing here! 

I found a description of the 0720 credit that maxes out at less money then I have saved.  I'm hyperventilating and trying to guess who I have to call to "unfile" my taxes so I don't look like a total cheater.  I can convince myself that I probably won't go to court over this error, but I might end up spending a lot on legal help over this stupid mistake.  Should I just write a check and send it in? They don't penalize you for over-paying.

After a little MORE digging, I finally found the correct form (which looks almost exactly like the other TWO incorrect forms, except the header is for "Annual Filing"), I find that this tax credit gets applied to the first ~$50,000 you make.  And uh... I'm well under that bar.  It's nice to remind oneself that these problems aren't really that huge in the scheme of things. 

Anyway, I'm feeling like a good citizen who has some seriously cluttered closets to attend to.