For various reasons, including a family illness I found that I needed to file for an extension this year. What could be simpler? How hard could this possibly be? Read on if you want to find out. I called my accountant on Monday – who was expecting that I would file for an extension. I realized suddenly that I was missing significant deductions and although the time was a concern, we agreed that I should get as many deductions as I could together so that I wouldn’t have to overpay and that I would drop everything off the next morning.
Just because I’m paranoid, it doesn’t mean there isn’t anyone out to get me - Or How many things can go wrong at once?
Tuesday morning I arrived at my accountant’s office bright and early with year end statements of my mortgage, my W-2’s from several adjunct teaching jobs I had and the completed spreadsheet. I walked through the door …..and entered a deserted office. Not a stick of furniture. NOTHING. Feeling a bit like I was in the Twilight Zone I started to panic….was I being abandoned to income tax limbo land on April 15th? I felt a panic attack coming on until I realized that I had a cell phone and telephone number. I called the office on my cell phone and heard some chuckling on the other end when I told them where I was. They had sent out announcements – but I had forgotten as it was right after April 15 of LAST year. OK – it was find the accountant time! I drove over to the next town and located his new office and dropped off my paper work.
Thus confident that everything was under control I went home to my home office and went about my work day. I got a call about an hour later saying that I owed far more money than I predicted. I had money ready for an electronic transfer if I needed it. All I had to do was fax the request - and ….and….and….the fax machine picked that moment not to work at all!
By this time I was convinced that someone out there was trying to get me --- feeling more than a tad paranoid, I called the accountant and said I would pick up the extension and MAIL it. I was worried that the electronic transfer wouldn’t work in time for an electronic filing that day. I had enough money in the account, but the last thing I wanted was a bounced payment – and the way the day was going, this wasn’t so far-fetched. Fortunately, he was able to email the extension in PDF format for me to print out – and miracles do happen – my printer actually WORKED. Then I got back into my car in search of a fax machine.
By the time that mission was complete, it was getting late and I had a couple of appointments. So the blogger in me decided that it would be kind of fun to mail the extension late at night – around 10:30 PM and see what it is like in the White Plains Post Office late at night on tax day…I actually got the idea from Teresa Boardman in a blog she wrote on that day. .might be kind of interesting and what could possibly go wrong……little did I know….
I’d sell my soul for a dated stamp:
I arrived at the post office about 80 minutes before midnight and found that it was minor bedlam. Cars everywhere and people honking and an angry looking crowd yelling – and a police car was pulling up. I was wondering how “normal” this could be – but having no other alternative, I walked in with my envelopes in hand. I heard several men pounding on the post office window and finally I heard the police officer threatening to arrest anyone who got out of line. We were instructed to form a single file line and stay in line and wait our turn. After about 20 minutes – the line hadn’t moved at all. Although I had no desire to spend a night in jail – I was starting to wonder why the line wasn’t moving but I needed to MOVE out of line in order to find out. There was nothing normal about this – but then nothing normal had happened all day long. Two of the men in front of me decided to do some checking for us. Meanwhile the line behind kept getting longer and longer…..
Apparently, there was only one machine to stamp all of our envelopes and it wasn’t working very well. It was taking over 1 minute per envelope and with the hundreds of people waiting with two envelopes. The postal people were hiding inside which was another problem that was angering the throng. The difficulty with the stamp machine could easily have been solved by a couple of postal workers coming out with rubber stamps and hand stamping the envelopes. Their anger was understandable – after all the post office was supposed to be open and ready to receive mail and stamp it until midnight. People who had arrived more than an hour before the deadline were obviously not going to make it wit the system in place. I waited until 2 minutes to 12 and then threw my envelopes in the bin with the regular mail unstamped. Most everyone else did the same. Although a large number of people decided to wait for some guarantee that their envelopes would be stamped “April 15.”
Aftermath:
I got home and poured a BIG glass of wine…..All I had done was show two houses and send in an EXTENSION of my income taxes. I felt like I had climbed a mountain!
The next day, I called the police department and apparently it was still quite a scene after I left. More police were called in and a report was filed. So for those who were waiting in line…there is a police report on file about the situation – just in case you find you need it!
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