Most people posted their tax nightmare stories Tuesday, but since mine continues to drag on, I suppose I can still justify a post.
The problems began when my former employer, the Social Security Administration, failed to change my state tax withholding when I transferred from an office in Indiana to an office in Illinois. I probably bear some responsibility for this too, but at any rate the result was that my taxes for both 2001 and 2002 are completely screwed up on the state level.
In the past, I've always done my own taxes - they've gotten more and more complicated each year, but I've always been up to the task. Not this time. I spent literally hours on the phone last year (at work) trying to sort this mess out, and the Social Security Administration absolutely refused to change the withholding records. Without a correct w-2 form, I was afraid I'd draw a lot of attention to myself, and with self-employment income for the past two years, I'm not exactly eager to be audited. So, at the urging of people close to me, I decided to bite the bullet and pay someone to do my taxes.
Just down the street there's a seasonal office for H&R Block, so I went over there. They were friendly, professional, and when I wondered out loud whether they could handle the problem, they told me "We're H&R Block. We can handle anything."
They were wrong. The fellow who handled my case ended up sending my returns to a central location, where they were promptly botched thanks to a communication failure. Meanwhile, I was instructed to send $400 to the state of Illinois based on the way the Indiana returns should have looked. Unfortunately, when the returns came back, they didn't reflect this at all, since they were processed according to my incorrect w-2 forms and not according to my instructions.
I found this pretty upsetting, since it means I'm out $400 that Illinois won't even know why I've sent. It also means I paid $352 for a bunch of tax returns I could have done myself, and which I'm going to have to do myself anyway thanks to H&R Block's incompetence. Luckily, I was able to get a hefty refund by raising hell at the central office; and after talking with the guy who actually handled my tax return there it looks like I may be able to handle the problem myself. Of course, I've still sent $400 into the vast Illinois tax bureaucracy, and I have no idea when or how I'll get it back.
I guess the moral of this story is, don't hire a so-called expert to do something you can do perfectly well yourself. And similarly, don't assume that the so-called experts actually know more than you do, especially when it concerns your problems.
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