Too Little, Too Lame

I felt instantly queasy as I realized the source of this number had to be in the federal return -- the one I'd filed weeks earlier, and which had yielded us an unexpected but much-appreciated refund.

I began clicking through the same interview screens I'd hoped to avoid seeing for another nine months at the very least. The W-2 forms all showed the right balance, and I couldn't have had any other source of withholding. So whence this "other"?

The "Search For a Topic ..." button was no help, since it only located the places where I *could* have entered this data, not where it actually was. Having exhausted the "Income" chapter, I turned to "Taxes and Credits" and still found nothing, then finally checked under "Deductions." Two or three screens deep, I found the incorrect item.

My only guess for how it got there: When TurboTax imported my Quicken tax-relevant data, it must have somehow forgotten to match this withholding with what appeared on our W-2 forms. And yet it never thought to flag this or inquire why I'd have such a high figure for withholding not backed up on any W-2s, even though it asked any number of nit-picking questions about far smaller totals for business expenses listed elsewhere.

Great, just great.

It was time to make the acquaintance of my new friend, Schedule 1040X, "Amended U.S. Individual Tax Return."

I battled through that document's required data entry with some pretty inadequate help from TurboTax (its explanations of what numbers were asked for in which places fell far short of the advice offered for the usual 1040 form). But I eventually got the thing done and shipped the damn thing off to the feds, complete with a big fat check to cover the incorrect refund (it had landed in our bank account a few days before), the taxes we'd owed all along and about $11 in interest.

At least I got the Virginia return filled our correctly -- or so I hope.

Now, I could have caught the mistake the first time around. Maybe I would have -- if I hadn't had to spend hours fussing over the meaningless distinctions the tax system imposes on income and expenses.

Ever year, I seethe in frustration at this needless complexity. I hate poorly optimized code and awkward user interfaces, and you'll never find a worse example of either than the tax code.

By sorting income and profits into dozens, if not hundreds of different categories, then filing expenses and costs into even more little boxes on a chart, these laws try to advance theoretically worthwhile social goals. But they're too complex for people with day jobs to keep track of. All they do is gum up the works at tax time.

(On the other hand, as the tax code becomes an increasingly accepted way to channel financial favors from the government, there's ever more demand for Jack Abramoffs to get more and better tax breaks written into law.)

There is one organization that came out looking good in my sorry little saga, however -- the IRS itself: When I called for help on filling out the 1040X last week, the people there picked up the phone immediately -- no hold music there -- and were polite and informative. I wish every interaction on the phone with a computer manufacturer could have been as efficient and productive.

Sunday Roundup

Besides my Samsung Q1 review, yesterday's Sunday Business section featured:

* Frank Ahrens's Web Watch column, in which he takes note of Cinco de Mayo by covering an interesting Web experiment in Mexican-American dialogue;

* A look at a family-friendly Web search service;

* Help File, where I reissue some advice about cleaning up and, more important, avoiding spyware.

Questions? Comments? Send them to rob@twp.com.