So my company messed up my tax statement, so I had to file an amendment. What a nightmare.
Back over to turbotax online… big noticeable option to file an amended return… seems simple enough.
Then it starts asking whether ‘this’ return is the same as the one you originally filed. This? It turns out Turbotax doesn’t really have a notion of the return you filed already, and the amended return you’re about to file. If you say that ‘this return’ has the information you filed previously, then when it does some calculations for the amended form, it takes the current values stored in your return for the calcs. After you start an amendment, you go and edit the original values. Since you said that at the point you started the amended return that your return was up-to-date, it can figure out the difference. Too bad there’s no way to go back! Confused yet?
I had to manually enter my old information before re-starting the amending procedure. Thankfully I had not clicked all the way through to the end, so I could go to the ‘print my copies’ part of the previous e-file’ed return and get a copy of the original version before it was lost forever.
Finally, after getting all the data squared away, I go to print. First of all, some parts of their site choke because on a Mac, you don’t have Adobe Reader installed. Of course we don’t. Apple Preview handles that, and it’s on every mac. Ok. Fine. Whatever. I finally get it to pop up the final PDF version in Preview.. looks fine… oh, I better save it before I do anything else. File.. Save As.. then Print… What the hell? The right side of all the forms are cut off, which means you can’t see any of the numbers! doh! It turns out Preview’s “Save As” doesn’t do quite what you expect. It seems that there is an interpretation step where manages to mangle the margins of these forms. Oddly enough, if I just save the original file instead of viewing it in Preview, then open it from disk, it works fine. So beware — Save As in Preview is not a bit for bit copy of the original.
Ok, whatever, I should email these files to work so that I can print them out and send them tomorrow. Click over to Mail… … … hard freeze. Only the second time that’s happened in a year, and it had to happen now. Fantastic. Hard reboot. Thankfully everything is still in tact. Email, Print, Done. Finally
My efforts should reward me in about $900 of refunds of overpaid taxes.
Maybe I should buy myself a keyboard to cheer myself up.
Is there a tax solution that works better on macs? or am I just a fool for even trying?