Taxationland - Ah, the way life should be...

The beautiful state of Maine. It has so much to offer us, miles of jagged coastline, a variety of winter activities and the best seafood and potatoes in the world. You quickly think of lobster and moose, Sugarloaf and Sunday River and the Portland Sea Dogs and Maine Red Claws. There is so much that is good about this fine state. And then you do your taxes...

Tax time is never a fun time for me. For years I have had friends that have bragged repeatedly about how much money they are getting back on their return. One friend is going on vacation with their return, while another is using their return as a down payment on a new car. Me, I'm lucky to get a Little Debbie snack with my return, and I don't mean the Double Oatmeal Creme Pie, the small one. More likely I will send some money up to Augusta. It doesn't seem to matter how many (or few) exemptions I have listed. It doesn't seem to matter how much (or how little) money I make in a given year. It never seems to matter if I am claiming Miss Kerrigan or if I'm claiming interest on the house. I get screwed every year by the state of Maine, and I really don't like it.

This year, I didn't work for nearly half of the year, collecting Unemployment compensation for a portion of that time. Now, I didn't have that money taxed up front, so I knew that would come back to bite me, and it did. Another little tidbit for you is that the Federal Government ignores the first $2400 in unemployment compensation (a little tax break courtesy of the Democrats and the Recovery Act), so you don't get taxed on that portion. Maine doesn't do that. The Obama administration also kicked in the Making Work Pay credit in 2009, so each working individual gets a $400 credit on their federal return. Maine, not so much. In terms of overall tax burden, Maine is the 14th highest in the country. It's no wonder I never get a tax return from the state of Maine.

Add to this the fact that Nichole and I have a few quirks on this years return with her selling Mary Kay and me doing some bookkeeping from the home office. These new twists made us question our math when we went over our taxes a couple weeks back. We decided to take everything in to H&R Block and have a tax professional give us a once over. We spent a little over two hours at their office on Sunday, only to realize we were further in the hole to the State of Maine than we originally thought, and our federal return was about at $0. Well, I guess we should have done it from home in the first place. Oh, wait, I almost forgot to tell you what H&R Block's fee was for helping us out. Guess... $75? Higher... $125? Higher... $200? Higher... Oh, I'll just tell you, $529!!! That's right, $529, can you f'ing believe that?! They charge you for every form they have to fill out, no matter if it takes them an hour to fill it out or 10 seconds. Since we had the home office listed, there were a handful of forms involved and the charges kept climbing. Needless to say, we took our paperwork and walked out the front door, thank god we had that option! If they can charge that much to do a return, they must get paid pretty good. Maybe I can work there on the weekends just to afford living in this fine state. I'm just saying...