Every year American’s scramble to get their taxes done to see if they are going to get an IRS tax refund. This money is often a welcome relief, and many use it to put away for savings, or to get larger ticket items for their homes that they may have been putting off. Each year I would look forward to this, as it meant that I could do a little guilt-free shopping. This year, however, that is going to change. For the first time in my life, I have to pay in. I guess it’s good that we are making so much more money, but having to pay in really isn’t fun.
For a long time our IRS tax refund was smaller, but still welcome. Once we added a child to our home, our refund got much bigger. I really didn’t give it much thought, but I thought it would be the same every year. It was always nice to get the IRS tax refund because I could use it for things my little girl needs. I thought this year I would get her a new bed and dresser, and put some of it away for her school clothes next fall. That was not meant to be.
My husband was always in a hurry to get our IRS tax refund back, so we always did our taxes in January, or at least as soon as we both had our tax information together. This year when he did the taxes on our software to get an idea of what we might expect to get back, he was puzzled. Though we knew we might have to pay some in because of my income, we had no idea how much it would be. He had a rather large refund coming from his income, but my tax ate that up, and I still owe quite a bit more. It was something of a shock, and we have delayed doing our taxes until we have to.
Normally, we would have already filed our taxes and we would have gotten our IRS tax refund back by now. This year we haven’t filed yet. I know we are coming up on the deadline, but it’s much harder to part with my hard earned money than I thought it would be. I know I have to pay taxes, and I know that there is no way around it, but that doesn’t make it any easier to do.
