Taxes? I Think I’ll Pass

The biggest epiphany I ever had about taxes was in the third grade when I realized that “taxes” and “Texas” were basically the same word — the vowels were just switched. Yeah, it doesn’t seem that cool to me now either, but that’s pretty much where my tax knowledge peaked.

Kristi

Unfortunately there’s much more to understand about taxes than how to spell the word, but there’s only so much my brain can hold between animated movie soundtrack lyrics that I just can’t let go, next Thursday’s to-do list and my wonderfully geeky knowledge of grammar. So, I’ve accepted that there are aspects of my life I can’t fully control — some things just have to be delegated out to people who are more qualified.

And during tax season, that person is my husband — he’s in charge of our income taxes. How wildly old fashioned of us, right? I usually sing the tune of, “Anything you can do, I can do better,” but this is not one of those situations. He’s better. He has the patience to read, research and crunch numbers. I like to pretend that he actually kind of likes doing the taxes, but I might have just made that up to relieve my annual tax-filing guilt.

I lend my strengths where I can. I can organize W-2s, statements and anything else that looks tax-ish, but when filing day arrives, I make myself scarce and only emerge in the form of that scrappy guy that boxers always have in their corners in the movies — I offer refreshing beverages, dab sweat, give pep talks, apply butterfly bandages to (paper)cuts, etc.

Every once in a while our household tax superstar gets stumped, and like a walking, talking Military OneSource commercial, I always point him to the tax resources on the site for two reasons:

1. I have absolutely no helpful tips of my own — seriously, not one.
2. Military OneSource has tax tips, professional tax counselors, filing services and the answers to military-specific questions, like “Where do I actually live?” and they understand why that can be confusing.

If you don’t have a tax superstar at your house or you are the superstar, but you hate to admit that you don’t actually know all the ins and outs of forms and filing, you have Military OneSource tax support in your corner (scrappy boxing coach not included). So, from the free filing services to the year-round access to tax consultants who can answer questions and maximize your refund, I encourage you to use the tax services available to you just as I gently suggest to my frustrated husband hours into the filing process.