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Scrambling to make tax deadline

As the tax deadline closes in Carolyn Varcados, right, with H&R Block in Durango, helps Benda Watts, with her taxes Monday, about 24 hours before the tax deadline strikes zero.

Tax Day, the financial equivalent of one’s yearly helping of overcooked, unsalted vegetables, is once again upon us.

And once again, many have waited till the last minute.

On Monday at lunchtime, every parking spot was taken outside H&R Block. As couples filed in to H&R’s offices, in every conceivable state of mind, Bobbie Heroy’s implacable leadership was reminiscent of Noah captaining his ark.

“It’s just like last year,” she said. “Everybody gets a hug today because it’s deadline, and everybody is fearful.”

Heroy said it’s been so busy, most of her staff had requested extensions, “Because we can’t get our own taxes done.”

Indeed, taxes have long proved a subject of national anxiety. Will Rogers, the cowboy humorist, remarked that, “The income tax has made more liars out of the American people than golf has. Even when you make a tax form out on the level, you don’t know when it’s through if you are a crook or a martyr.”

When filling out income-tax forms, even Einstein complained: “This is too difficult for a mathematician. It takes a philosopher.”

Many Durangoans expressed similar feelings of IRS-inspired defeat. Elias Pfeifer, a bartender at El Moro Spirits and Tavern, said he’d filed his taxes only because of his mother, who’s in finance. “If I had to do it on my own, I’d probably try not to look at it and just get my rebate,” he said.

Pfeifer said his favorite tax exemption was capital gains, which protects money he invests in his Roth Individual Retirement Fund from being taxed when he withdraws it, so long as he waits till he’s 55. For him, that’s a few decades away.

“Usually, I just think I’m happy that some of that money is going to roads and infrastructure. I’m certainly not happy that my tax money is going for congressmen’s salaries,” he said.

Penni Neiberger, of Durango Antique Market, is requesting an extension this year. She said her favorite tax is the income tax, and her least favorite tax is the sales tax.

Like Pfeifer, Neiberger is also displeased that her tax dollars are paying U.S. senators’ and representatives’ salaries. But she said she was delighted to help fund education.

“Other countries provide better educations and health care than we do. Obamacare – this just has to work,” she said.

While Neiberger said taxation is just, she thinks much government spending is preposterous. She recalled that while her grandfather served as a county commissioner in Montana, in order to get funding to build a much-needed nursing home, the state insisted that the county first dig a fishing pond.

“Meanwhile, the county was surrounded by a creek! We didn’t need a stupid fishing pond. My grandfather called them educated idiots. But that still goes on. To get money from states, we still have to do stupid stuff,” Neiberger said.

At Magpies Newsstand Cafe on Monday afternoon, Bryce Turner said he hadn’t yet filed his taxes.

“My W-2 is sitting on my desk. I’ve been looking at it for well over a couple of months, and it’s been looking at me back. I’ll do it tonight,” he said.

Annually, Turner said Colorado’s sales tax on alcohol probably hits him hardest. But when it comes to the feds, “they usually end up owing me money, so I feel like I come out ahead.”

Turner said he was most excited to support pubic lands and least excited about funding the National Security Agency. Asked to tell the funniest tax story he’d ever heard, Turner said he didn’t know any. “Usually, they’re not that funny,” he said.

Jamie Craig-Sells, owner of Dolce Boutique, said she was most excited to fund public education. “I have a 4-year-old,” she said. She worried about Obamacare, saying it hasn’t yet “benefitted everybody the way it was supposed to.”

She said the craziest exemption she’d heard of was businessmen who wrote off meetings at exotic dancing establishments.

“I know people who have done it. They put it down as travel and entertainment. Wives don’t like it. ‘Why did you have to lunch there?’ and he says, ‘It was a business meeting.’”

Craig-Sells said a hefty IRS bill is “the only downside to owning your own business. I used to get $4,000, $5,000 rebates. Now, I usually owe something. Then again, if you have enough write-offs and go to enough strip joints ...” she said, laughing.

Outside the Division of Motor Vehicles, Shaun Morris, who works for Durango School District 9-R, said he’d already paid his taxes. While he would prefer a flat tax, he said he’s excited to support fish and wildlife, his favorite federal-tax beneficiary.

He doubted that paying more tax money or adopting a different federal tax scheme would shorten the line at the DMV.

He said he’d been waiting for 40 minutes already. “It would probably be the same.”

cmcallister@durangoherald.com

Late to file?

Can’t file by April 15? According to the IRS, if you need to file late:

The fastest and easiest way to get the extra time is through the Free File link on IRS.gov. In a matter of minutes, anyone, regardless of income, can use this free service to electronically request an automatic tax-filing extension on Form 4868.

Filing this form gives taxpayers until Oct. 15 to file a return. To get the extension, taxpayers must estimate their tax liability on this form and should also pay any amount due.

By properly filing this form, a taxpayer will avoid the late-filing penalty, normally 5 percent per month based on the unpaid balance, that applies to returns filed after the deadline. In addition, any payment made with an extension request will reduce or eliminate interest and late-payment penalties that apply to payments made after April 15. The interest rate is currently 3 percent per year, compounded daily, and the late-payment penalty is normally 0.5 percent per month.

Besides Free File, taxpayers can choose to request an extension through a paid tax-preparer, using tax-preparation software or by filing a paper Form 4868, available on IRS.gov. Of the more than 12 million extension forms received by the IRS last year, more than 7 million were filed electronically.



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