23 March 2023 Taxes are fun! 2023 edition

[KathyB]

My taxes are a mess, which is why I pay somebody to do them instead of using TurboTax. Today I saw my accountant, and this may be the earliest I've ever had my taxes done. It definitely took less time today than it ever had in the past (which kind of makes me wonder if I forgot anything major). The best news is that I'm getting a refund from both the IRS and the state, and this is even after applying the overpayment toward my estimated taxes for 2023. I can't even remember the last time that happened. So I don't owe any estimated payments this year, and I'm getting something back (not much, but enough to pay some bills like life insurance).

After the accountant, I went to Petco and got some presents for Bernadette's upcoming birthday.

[scenicdesign71]

Yay presents and yay upcoming Bernaday!    Dogs really do make everything better, even taxes.

I've been hunting for the 1099 from one of my design gigs last year, which I either never received, or received and somehow misplaced.  Entering everything else on TurboTax in the meantime, I'd be due for a decent federal refund -- about half of which would go back to NY state.  But this final 1099 puzzle piece will have me getting back less from the IRS and owing more to the state, which is why I haven't yet worked up the appropriate sense of urgency about finding it.

I'd rather find a few magical expense receipts that would convert my supposed self-employed business profit to a loss -- which is certainly what it felt like, given the weeks of gainful TV employment I gave up to work on these theatre projects.  In recent years I've become only semi-organized about keeping track of receipts, and while I may yet be able to find a few more beyond the ones I've already entered, they probably won't be enough to substantially improve the tax totals.  Even so, between federal and state I still probably won't be paying anything out of pocket this year, and might even get a teensy return, which is something.

I'd care less if my day job hadn't recently gone on hiatus until June, with me having saved less than usual this season (due, again, mostly to having taken more time off than usual to do plays that pay peanuts); a smaller return means a leaner spring and/or a busier hiatus looking for interim work.

I need to befriend a neighbor with a dog.

[KathyB]

I'd rather find a few magical expense receipts that would convert my supposed self-employed business profit to a loss -- which is certainly what it felt like, given the weeks of gainful TV employment I gave up to work on these theatre projects. 

Suggestion for last-minute expenses:

Mileage and transit--any time you had to make a trip out to the location of a project, or to a place to get supplies, it counts as an expense. These are not necessarily things you keep track of with receipts. (I certainly don't get a receipt every time I use the light rail.) How many times did you take a taxi/Uber/subway to something related to the freelance jobs? I had a trip to MicroCenter and a trip to a deli that I was able to write off as business expenses.

[scenicdesign71]

Actually yeah, Ubers would've constituted the majority of those "few more [receipts] beyond the ones I've already entered" -- not enough to make a whole lot of difference, but in any case, I got embroiled in a bunch of other craziness and forgot to add them.

But conquering that craziness (all to do with the fact that my main job moved to Yonkers last year, and my summer job was in New Jersey -- which, between them, created a tangle of red tape that required one of TT's tax advisers to help sort out by phone for several hours) ended up being well worth the extra I had to pay for said assistance.  Uncle Sam, New York and New Jersey all now owe me refunds: enough that, even with the larger of the two state refunds being eaten up by the cost of the tax prep itself (about twice what I'm used to paying TT most years), I'll still be getting back enough to just cover two months' rent.

It also helped that that missing 1099, when I finally located it online, turned out not to be a 1099 after all: one of my design gigs, bless them, had actually put me on a W2 and withheld a quarter of my fee in taxes.

And YAY IT'S FINISHED. 


In other news, I've been killing a lot of free time this past week obsessing over that clip of Walter's bust.  The point had been simply to erase myself (in paint clothes, with one arm buried in Walter's beret-less head to release the catch inside) from the original clip, which was shot before the effect had been rigged to be operable remotely.  But since then, I've additionally ended up digitally tweaking the face itself a bit, adding a faux dolly-out and a hint of dappled sunlight playing over the scene, plus a musical sting for fun.  As of yesterday, a whole bunch of idiotically fussy motion-, compositing-, and FX-work in AfterEffects, and three distinct sound tracks (in an eleven-second clip) have yielded what I think at last is the absolutely final portfolio-worthy version (below).

Keep your sound on, but not too loud -- maybe 75%? -- as it does get kinda shrill.  (If I were to make one more final adjustment, it would be to modulate those music cues a little more subtly, as I got a bit overenthusiastic with their dynamic range).  It looks best in full-screen mode on a proper screen (a laptop or a decent-size tablet, not a phone), and if you feel like turning the lights out for appropriate ambience, go for it:

    SPOOKY!