I’ve just finished filing my federal income taxes. We do get a refund — which is much better than having to pay. For the past several years I’ve used H&R Block’s TaxCut to figure out my taxes. I made the switch from Intuit’s TurboTax back when Intuit implemented a very buggy registration system in an effort to prevent more than one person using a particular copy of TurboTax. The company lost a huge portion of their customer base with that move and I’m one customer that they haven’t won back. For the first time, however, I’m not particularly happy with TaxCut!

Last year we lived in Colorado until May and then in Idaho for the rest of the year. Consequently I have to file state taxes in both states. When I bought TaxCut I also bought the state tax software and installed that for my Idaho return. I then bought another state tax package from TaxCut, downloaded it, and installed it as Colorado. After I finished my federal return (and filed it electronically), the program went on to do the state tax calculation. It went through Colorado just fine. It started the Idaho tax process and then sweetly told me that the program couldn’t handle part-year tax returns and that I had to go get the forms and figure out my taxes on paper. What kind of idiocy is that, I ask!

If I can figure it out on paper, it seems obvious to me that a computer program can certainly be written to figure it out. Now I’m out $25 because the program doesn’t do the job and I still have to go find the forms and do the paperwork. I would suggest this is pretty crappy customer service. Are you listening H&R Block?

I’ve just spent the past couple of afternoons in an overview of labor laws in Belgium. That was quite an education. The tax rates, particularly for their version of social security, are pretty steep. Makes it a bit more difficult to complain about the amount of taxes I have to pay each year, I guess. One of the people in the class remarked that we could have the same social services setup here as long as we were willing to pay the taxes for it. I think not. The money works much better when it’s in my pocket rather than when it’s in the government’s pocket and they’re trying to do something to help me. Meanwhile, our federal taxes have been filed electronically. The Colorado State taxes have been printed so I can mail them in. All that is left is to track down the Idaho forms and work out those numbers. I was planning to be done tonight, but no such luck.

On another topic, due to a health emergency with a manager in Manila, Philippines, I’ll be making a short-notice trip to Manila at the end of next week. I’ll be gone, it turns out, for three weeks kind of filling in for the recovering manager. Stay tuned for pictures and commentary from that part of the world. It should be interesting!