Last night I devoted my free time to taxes again. This time I tackled my and NT's federal return. I used the "free file fillable forms" tool, which lets you do them half manually (but with some help doing the math after you fill in your numbers).

I was checking my work against my scribbled notes from February. Everything was nearly identical -- until I got to the Lifetime Learning Credit. My old notes showed over $300 less of a credit than my new calculations. Weird! The only thing I can think of to explain it is that the form we got from the college says "corrected"; so maybe I was looking at preliminary numbers online and got the actual form later with bigger numbers. Or maybe I miscalculated what 20% of the tuition paid would be.

Either way, I'm going with my new number, since I can't figure out where the old number came from. That means instead of owing $291 to the IRS, we get a $75 refund! Hooray! That adds $366 to our surplus, since I already had the money set aside to pay that bill.

By the time I was done it was pretty late, and NT needed the computer to apply for jobs. So I'll tackle the state side another time (maybe tonight depending on how I fee). I don't think I'll be as lucky there -- I think my estimate of owing over $1000 will be correct. But, overall, we'll owe about $800 between us all when you factor in the refunds, which is better than the $1150 I thought we'd owe after refunds!

Once I finish the state portion of my and NT's taxes, I'll mail everything in and be done with that, and can get back to more tangible decluttering/organizing!