Tax Papers

Never found them. Have spent several hours going through the entire house, car, everything. Checked at work - nothing.
The last time I saw them I had taken them into a tax preparer's office to see about getting it all done. They told me $250 per yer plus more for the 2007 year. I balked at that and decided to just let it go.
I did take those forms back out to the car with me, and that's the last time I can remember seeing them.
I have searched everything - and I do mean everything. It took me an hour just to go through the stuff in the closet - ALL of it.

So, I resolved to myself that I would just have to start over.
Which really isn't that bad - except - all that time I spent going over all the things I lost in the house fire. I spent days worth of time attempting to write it all down, and now that so much time has passed, I couldn't possibly remember all of that.

The good news is that I wrote it all into an email that I sent to myself - just in case this happened. Yup, I found that email and yup, if I hadn't written it down I would have forgotten half of that stuff at least. That would be the singlemost difficult thing to replace.

The rest? Call my company and have them fax me a copy of 2007 end of year W-2. I have the amount to have the house removed memorized - $4,100.00
That should also be able to be a write-off, but I'll have to call the company and have them fax me that document as well. Hopefully they will do that. I'm assuming an automatic audit which is the 2cd reason I haven't done it, I have no desire to sit in an office with a tax man attempting to prove that what I say on that return is actually the truth.

Another thing that I never did get is a copy of the report by the fire inspector. Guess I'll have to track that down this coming week - have to prove that the house burned down. I do have pics of it, though, on my Photobucket account as I recall I took a large number of them. It shows half the house completely gutted and the rest of the house with extensive smoke damage. If an audit does occur - which I recall everyone telling me they will do it - I will have proof of the fact that my house was nothing but charred wood, melted metal and ashes.

I will have to fully prepare myself for an eventual audit, but I am going to get the return done this week regardless. I am still half tempted to just buy TurboTax software - but - I don't know how that would work for the year 2007? I'll have to look into that. I'm just going to have to grab the bull by the horns here and tackle into this and discard the anxieties of the thought of having to prove all of this and sit there with some geek dude or dudette wearing horn-rimmed glasses behind a huge desk sitting there glaring down at me with them figuring they will do me in somehow - the tax man that is. That's they way I like to think of those people, they chose that profession, they are probaby not well liked by too many people.

I've got the house write-off; the removal of the house write-off; I assume something can be gained from the purchase of a house, dunno about that; and of course the taxes I paid that year. Also wondering if having to pay for 2 residences at the same time would be considered a write-off - the stays at the hotel rooms and then subsequently having to rent an apartment while also paying the mortgage on the property at the same time. Certainly worth asking about. As it stands I can claim probably 100k write-off on the house and lost personal property contained within. It was an old mobile home, can't really say it was worth THAT much! I'm just going by what the market said at the time it was worth.

This is more than I really want to deal with right now, but I have no choice. I am not about to let the IRS do that tax year return for me. I will spend the money to get this done and I'm going to have to use a tax preparer now that I think about it, at least for that year, because I have no idea what I can write off and what I can't or even how to go about doing it.

Fun fun.

There is nothing more I can do today unless I can think of somewhere else to look for that paperwork. I'm kicking myself for not putting it in a safe place - or maybe I put it in TOO safe a place but I can't think of anywhere else I might have put that stuff. I pulled the bench seat out of the car wondering if it got jammed down under there, searching under the seats, the glove compartment even the trunk. I have this feeling I brought that stuff back into the house - but if it's here, it's invisible to my eyes and as I said, I am highly annoyed with myself for losing that rather valuable data.

Oh well.

I'm off to the grocery store - I'm going to make something today - dunno what, I figure walking around the store will give me some ideas. I'm hungry right now, really, but I don't feel like cooking, I just expended a huge amount of energy going through everything looking for that paperwork - and to think it was a waste of time since there were no results in that activity.

ben