Death & Taxes

A question just popped into my head: Do you have to pay taxes for the year in which you have died? Not you personally, but rather, your estate? I wasn't the excecutor for the mother's estate, I suppose I could ask my brother. After all, there were earnings prior to her passing. If you file a tax return for the decedent do you (the estate) get all the taxes you've paid back?

I received an annuity payment from the mother's retirement fund and hoped/planned that her house would sell before now, so I did the foolish thing and didn't have any taxes withheld. D'oh! I'm generally the one who files their taxes within days of receiving my W-2. Ever notice how you file early when you expect a return and late when you owe? Monday night I went online to file for an extension. Imagine my surprise when I learned they want to know what your taxes are in order to file for the extension! Well, if I knew that I'd just file, now wouldn't I ?!? Piffle, I might as well just do the whole thing now.

I had gotten my hands on the tax papers shortly before looking for the extension info so I was already a step ahead of the game. There are plenty of online services for those of us with relatively uncomplicated lives (fiscally uncomplicated, that is!). I happened to choose the H&R Block link for no particular reason. It held my hand and stepped me through the process quite nicely. At the end I learned that I had too much income to get the preparation for free. Well, $15 isn't so very much, fine, let's get on with it. My bottom line: I owe a few thousand bucks! Bummer! The online thing can get you set up with a nice payment plan with that automatic sucking sound that comes from your bank account. I think the government is more amenable to payments than an outright refusal to pay, so I opted for this route. The online thingy is all set up with the necessary forms for all this and then they electronically submit the whole she-bang for you. I got an email this afternoon stating that my tax return had been accepted.

Not so bad for having cut it so close to the wire for the first time in my life. Now if we can only sell the house, I can pay those pesky taxes off in full.

And now for something completely different:



I was avoiding work for a while today and came across this video and thought it was hilarious and felt compelled to share it with you all. It's entitled 'An Engineer's Guide to Cats'. You may want to avoid taking a drink of your beverage while viewing and I know of one person who laughed so hard it induced an asthma attack, just so you know it's just that funny.