Tax Time: Diary of a Cheapskate

Should anyone ask, this column wasn’t written on my fairly new laptop.

Instead, it was composed on a piece of “equipment or machinery” acquired as a “capital expense, the payment of which is expected to last more than one year.”

And should anyone ask, that wasn’t my TV room where I wrote it, lolling in a big comfy armchair while Law & Order reruns played on the flatscreen.

Instead, I worked in the “part of [my] home that is used exclusively and regularly for trade or business.”

I am not making this jabberwocky up. It’s all in print in the various IRS publications I’ve been poring over for weeks, hunting for things to deduct or depreciate on my 2007 return. Yes, I know, I could hire a trained killer from H&R Block, Jackson Hewitt, or Someone Your Aunt Edith Knows Who’s Good and Out of Jail to try to get me a bigger refund.

But I’d have to pay the guy.

Er, I mean, I totally love a challenge. If it can somehow be demonstrated that my condo in Atlanta is partially in Alaska (where apparently just about any meal qualifies as a “business expense”), I really want to be the one who figures out how to do it.

Plus, I really don’t want to have to pay the guy.

These days, it doesn’t even have to be an actual guy (or gal) who’ll happily take your money to advise you on all the ways the government has to take your money. There are CD-Roms and interactive Web sites that do the same thing, although there’s only so far they can go to help some folks. The other day, I met someone who’d actually spent $49.95 to download the “Premium” version of Turbo Tax’s return preparation service—and she still files the 1040EZ!

You’re familiar with 1040EZ, right? It asks about eight questions, the toughest being “Who are you?” (no fair cheating and looking at the name printed on the address label). I had a ninth question I was dying to ask this chick, but we were at a charity event and somehow “Are you too stupid to live?” felt inappropriate.