Disorderly Content

I read a blog post a couple of days ago about somebody's issue with his quarterly tax payment. You can tell how much attention I paid; not only can't I remember who wrote the post, it didn't even dawn on me to think about my own quarterly payment being due. Which led to a panic moment this morning, when I realized that it was, and a month sooner than I expected.

This is the first year I've had to deal with estimated tax payments, thanks to my second and third jobs, or my hobbies with income, or however you want to look at them. I made enough extra last year that I'm making extra payments, the first of which occurred on April 15th. So I carefully set up both iCal and Quicken with reminders for upcoming payments. Except, you see, the government can't be nearly as consistent as software expects. Quarterly payments aren't. Instead of April, July, October and January, spaced a consistent three months apart, the spacing is actually two, then three, then four, then three again. Fortunately, I discovered my error just in time, and got the money on the way before the guvmint got mad at me.

Which led to another small panic. Both the state and the feds have websites where you can make payments. The federal site requires you to submit a form, wait for paperwork and then call in to get a PIN. I forgot that last step, so it's another paper check for now. But California's is easier, and I used it for my previous payment. Except... I went looking on their site and was asked for my Social Security Number (no problem) and something called a Customer Service Number, which I remembered using to submit my return. And which isn't on any of the paperwork I printed back when I did my taxes. But after I was done panicking, I found a place to retrieve my CSN (that required a specific number from my return, which meant another panicky search). And after getting the number, discovered I didn't actually need it. I had mistakenly followed the My FTB Account link, which required the CSN, rather than the Payment Options link. I guess when you're giving them money, they don't care so much about who you are.

A blog post on The Consumerist pointed to a finance quiz on U.S. News & World Report, which is a sampling of questions posed to 12th graders. The average on the test is 52%; my score on the six sample questions was 6. Which led me to wonder if that was good or not. Is that 6 out of 6? Or 6 out of a hundred? I worry about these things, you see.

Turns out to be six out of six, by the way. Which I guess means I am actually smarter than a 12th grader, about some things at least.

I've been dreading doing my taxes this year. Part of it, I suppose, is the added complexity of my website income, my stock photo income, that little win I had in Laughlin, Nevada in December; all those things were fun when the money came in, but not quite so much fun when some of it has to go out. But the biggest hassle relates to SGI, my former employer who cancelled all of my stock in December. That means it's worthless for anything but wallpapering an outhouse. It also means capital loss deductions for the next several years, assuming I can figure out the cost basis for all those ten year old shares. It's further complicated by the way SGI divested itself of MIPS Computer; each share of SGI turned into some fractional share in MIPS, which changes the basis for all those old shares. And the accounting program I used back then is long since obsolete, as are the OS (Mac OS 9) and processor (PowerPC) it ran on. I do still have a PPC-based Mac, but the thought of bringing up OS9 and digging for the data doesn't appeal.

Fortunately we have the Web. And, for the thousandth time this month, how did we survive before the Web? A quick search got me the prices and the percentage breakdown for that stock calculation. And another search got me the (deductable) Vehicle License Fee amount for my new car. Can't get it off the registration renewal if the car's too new to need renewal, can I?

So, a couple of hours later, I think I have most everything entered and calculated. I might have missed one stock purchase, so I guess I'll have to power up the old PowerBook and look at those old accounts after all. But it could have been a lot worse, even if I do still get angry every time I think of SGI's abandonment of its stockholders. At least after this year I won't have any reason to think about SGI stock. That's something.