I suppose I could blame my current fatigue and headache on the IRS, but that would be too easy. It's actually all because of Intuit. It took more than two weeks for my copy of Turbotax to arrive. Then, when I installed it, I discovered a delightful software BUG. Yes, people, be warned that Intuit is handing out software that has bugs and incomplete tax information. First of all, if you have a Macintosh and have upgraded from System 9 to System X and if you did your taxes in Turbotax last year, you will have problems transferring last year's data into this year's program. For some people, this is not a big deal, but we have depreciations and a lot of other stuff that would be really difficult to enter by hand. I spent 3.5 hours last night wrestling with this problem, more than half of that either on the phone or in the online chat support thing. I spent forty minutes waiting in chat for someone to help me, then I was pretty quickly given a phone number and an access code and got to call up and spend a similar amount of time on the phone. The tech support guy had me do a lot of strange things, including actually modifying file attribute codes and so forth. Finally, it was eleven PM, I was near tears from frustration and exhaustion, and I told the guy I wanted to give up. I decided to send the software back and take the taxes to an accountant. I flopped over on my bed and thought of something that the last advice from the tech support guy made me think of. I tried it. It worked. Sort of. End result: I can use Turbotax for System X, IF I boot the computer up in System 9 first and use it within System 9. It's inconvenient, but I was able to do the taxes today. Sort of. It turns out there's a bunch of incomplete information and I'll have to wait for Intuit to get it out in a software patch. *sigh* It's a pretty large refund, and I'd like to have it. Please. Intuit, are you listening?
(In a related rant, I'm angry with Intuit for their steadily deteriorating Apple support in general. Turbotax seems to be getting worse by the year, with late-arriving, but necessary software updates and now a major bug. I have Quicken-related gripes with them as well. Firstly, they don't make Quicken Home and Business for the Macintosh, which is the package I really want, not Quicken Deluxe plus Quickbooks (which is $300). AND, even if Intuit comes through, it seems the majority of banks and financial institutions don't bother to provide Macintosh compatible Quicken downloads so I'm having to enter a lot of transactions by hand anyway. Grrrr.)
I'm filing schedule C this year. Any tax advice or tips from those experienced at actually earning income from writing? What do you deduct? What do you depreciate? Do you claim a home office?
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