Finished with taxes! Almost had a heart attack yesterday when I was 90% done

[mnhtnbb]

and after Windows 10 did an updating, my TurboTax returns I was working on for 2016 disappeared. TT acted like I'd never
started a return. WTF?!?

Thank goodness for my oldest son--an IT guy-- who rode to my rescue last night--time out here while I answered a phone call from India with a call from
Windows Technical Department--honest to God, I kid you not--because I hate Windows and my son installed a Virtual Machine to run
Windows 10 in my laptop (with Linux OS) so I could do TurboTax. (TT won't run on Linux.)

So all is good now. Federal return e-filed and accepted. Will not have to deal with Windows 10 ever again unless I don't get a Mac before tax return season 2017 (which is currently my plan).

Usually I have taxes done by my birthday in early March. I have procrastinated and resisted this year unlike any other year. It's Cheeto and his Republican Congress. I resent paying taxes that will be used to give billionaires tax breaks while everything I care about gets defunded.

[DFW]

1. I'm jealous

My taxes are so complicated the Germans and the Americans are still fighting over my return from 2011, and every one from then on. My income is all in the USA, but my residence is Germany, and some of my income is source-taxed in the USA, and therefore excluded from German tax under the double-taxation treaty. The only trouble is, the Germans don't want to honor parts of the double-taxation treaty they find inconvenient, and so, between the two, I am being asked to pay 90% on a decent part of my income. Plus, the Germans pretend they have no idea what a Roth IRA is, and want to tax that, too, although I was a US resident when I paid the taxes up front, and under US law, I own my IRA free and clear.

Be thankful you can do your taxes with a computer program! Anything that eliminates incompetent, uncaring bureaucrats is a blessing.

[mnhtnbb]

3. You could always turn in your US passport. Surely you wouldn't want to move back here.

[DFW]

5. I always want the option

I can't erase who I am or where I'm from. My siblings live there still, one of my daughters chooses to live there, and I may yet end up retiring to Cape Cod, Massachusetts, one of the places I really feel at home back there. Well, I haven't been there in the winter, so I may join my younger daughter in her quest to one day have a place on the Big Island of Hawai'i, too. She went to school there for two years, and still considers herself Kama'aina. We can dream, right?

But my wife is from here, and doesn't want to leave Germany, either. Most of her friends are here, and this is definitely where she feels most at home. I hate the German bureaucracy (many of the Nazis were minor administrators), but the people are mostly fine. Switzerland would be OK, too, even though we know fewer people there. I see the only solution as continuing to be a world citizen, and battling the various bureaucracies to the extent I can. If that gets to be too much, I'll head for more friendly climes, wherever they might be. A friend of mine, who is half German, half Polish, just left Germany to live outside of Zürich, in Switzerland. The bureaucrats here got to be too much for him, and the Swiss said he was welcome, since the company he works for has a Zürich office, and needed someone with his skills anyway. No welfare burden, German-speaking, stable family and immediate tax revenue--just how the Swiss like it. He has even started to learn to speak the Zürich dialect, something he has always envied me for.

[Scoopster]

2. Just curious..

1) How many of us have already filed our returns? I usually e-file first week of Feb. but this year was about a month and a half late.
2) If anyone requested direct deposit for a refund, how long did it take? In previous years I received my refund in a week. It's been almost two weeks now and I haven't even gotten notice that they've begun processing it.

[mnhtnbb]

4. We have a complicated return--nothing like DFW living abroad--but complicated for us.

My husband is self-employed, which means we submit quarterly estimated payments. His office is in our home, which allows us
to take deductions for a portion of expenses applied to the entire house. We have a rental in our garage apartment. I have a trust
which my parents left me...and that's the easy part although I need two TurboTax programs because the one for preparing tax returns
for trusts isn't included in Home and Business.

If taxes were fairly distributed, I would be all in favor of a flat tax. It would be so easy to get a bill--like property tax--and just pay it every year.
But in our capitalist society it doesn't work that way.

So, we get to play the game every year because the big boy billionaires decreed it.

It's interesting to me that in the last couple of years since the Republicans took control of NC, our tax owed to the state has increased dramatically. Plus, we are taxed on an ever higher percentage of our social security benefits (I'm 66 and my husband is 74).