Alexander is self-employed and we doour own taxes.  And, for some strange reason, we always wait until the April 15th deadline to prepare and file them.  As a result, tax day is always a fun-filled occasion for us. 

Alexander started working on our taxes at 10 AM.  I had to take the kids to their art class that lasts from noon until 1 PM on Tuesdays, and I’d made plans for us to have lunch with Garrett and his mother afterward.  Alexander asked if I could come straight home from art class instead, so I called Kay and cancelled lunch.  She and her husband hadn’t filed their taxes yet, either, so she was understanding about it. 

Since I’m a full-time stay-at-home-mom nowadays, I had very little income in 2006.   My part of our taxes were easy to prepare, but I spent a lot of time rounding up receipts, bank statements, etc.  

We have to make quarterly estimated tax payments throughout the year since Alexander is self-employed, so the ideal situation is that when we filed on April 15th, we will neither owe money to the State or to the IRS, nor be entitled to a refund — in other words, we’ll come out even.   This time, we had overpaid the State by $700, and we owed $800 to the IRS, so that pretty much balanced out. 

Once all of the forms had been completed, copies made for our records, W-2 forms attached, the correct addresses put on the envelopes (WV residents send their federal tax returns to the IRS processing center in Kansas City, MO — since the IRS apparently didn’t mail us a tax booklet this year, we had to look up the correct address on the Internet.  We received a tax booklet from the State of WV, but they want their returns sent to one of two different addresses, depending on whether or not you are enclosing a check), they were finally ready for mailing at 9 PM.

The post office in downtown Charleston is always the nearest one that stays open until midnight on April 15th, so that’s where the kids and I took our returns for mailing.  I’m always perversely glad to see that we’re not the only ones who file their tax returns at the last minute.  There was a steady stream of people going in and out of the post office when we arrived at 9:30 PM, and I’m guessing that continued right up to midnight.