[Personal] Audited...

WARNING: This post eventually devolves into a bunch of emo bullshit. You have been warned.

I found out today that my Utah state taxes were audited. Utah's state taxes are very simple, so I generally don't have to worry about making any mistakes. For my 2003 taxes, I actually owed $4, so I paid it and all was good...or so I thought.

I got a letter today saying I owed an additional $330. Fortunately, I've got my taxes from previous years here on my machine. Turns out that the audit was correct. The tax software that I was using used my full federal tax responsibility instead of half as listed in the instructions. Check their support, and find out that the patch to fix this issue was released about two weeks after I filed my return. Contact their support, and find out their guarantee only applied if you filed using the fully patched version of their software.

So, I've got a month to come up with the extra $330 before they start applying additional penalties. Joy. It's bad enough that I owe $150 on my federal taxes, worse that even though I was only a Utah state resident for 2 hours last year, I'm not getting a refund on my Utah state taxes for last year, and it's even worse that I still haven't been able to deduct my mortgage insurance, but this extra $330 couldn't have come at a worse time. At least my federal return was error-free.

I made a choice late last year to try to knock my debts out quickly. As a result, I'm paying a lot more each month, but my debts are dropping at a significant rate. However, that reduces the amount of liquid funds I have each month down to a pretty small amount. This amount has been squished even more because of the power bill increase down here and the higher-than-expected rent increase. And of course, my trip to Utah back in January so I could try to take care of our home up there and so my wife could see our granddaughter tapped my buffer.

So in this case, I'm living with the consequences of my actions. I just find it ironic that my efforts to eliminate my debt have made it so that an unexpected debt can kick my ass.