D.C. Taxes

I filed our taxes pretty early this year. They were in on February 4th and our federal refund was back by the 12th. Despite my nervousness about filing as married, the federal return was a breeze and I was finished within an hour (thanks to Turbo Tax). I then moved on to the antiquated D.C. online forms, because they're so Secure! Accurate! and Provide Faster Refunds! Usually this takes about 15 minutes. All you do is answer a few questions, do a bit of simple math, and zoom through to a measly, yet welcome refund.

I started out by entering the same filing status as our federal return (Married filing jointly) and whizzed through the form. Oh crap! We owed almost $1000. Ok, back to the paper. I went through all the steps again and we still owed in the quadruple digits. I knew something had to be wrong, so I started at the beginning. I read the booklet from cover to cover and found that there are multiple ways to file if you are married or in a domestic partnership:

1) Married Filing Jointly (common sense would tell you to pick this category)
2) Married Filing Separately
3) Married Filing Separately on the same Form (huh?)
4) Married Filing on Mars with 18 feline dependents (just kidding)

Apparently you're supposed to figure out your filing status all three ways and choose the one that gives you a better return. What? Is this a joke? You get to choose how much you want to pay? So, I did something that I swore I would never do.... I paid for Turbo Tax State edition. It hurt my newly found frugal soul to shell out $11.95, but in the end it was a tiny fraction of what we saved.

Fast forward to Thursday. We still hadn't received our state tax refund. Given the fact that Washington Post has daily updates on D.C.'s tax fraud scandal, I thought I should call and take some action before the cash flow dried up. I dialed the customer service number to inquire about my long overdue deposit and the lady said, "Honey you OWE $919. You must have looked on the wrong line in the table in the back of the book." Dead silence. She told me the problem areas over the phone for me to verify later. I hung up.

Then it occurred to me, the figure she gave on the phone was exactly the same as when I figured out the form by hand the first time. She would have been correct if I had filed under category 1, but I filed under category 3, Married Filing Separately on the same Form. That meant the back of the booklet didn't apply. Instead, I had to fill out Schedule S, Table J, and sprinkle some fairy dust on my head to get our special tax figure. I called customer service again (thankfully getting another representative) and explained the problem. They admitted it was their mistake. We should expect our whopping $212 return in 7-10 days. Whew. That was close. Rather than dipping into our future house fund we are able to pad it. Yeah, we're high rollers.

Although I'm all riled up about such a mistake on their part, it's a relief to know that I'm not a complete idiot - the tax forms in D.C. really are that complicated.