Tax man taketh and tax man givith back

I know you are thinking I got the title of this post all wrong, but oddly, I didn't.

I pay my sales tax quarterly. It's never very much as the marjority of my sales are outside of the state. Usually, I pay between $20 and $30 a quarter. At the beginning of this year I received a notice that because I did pay so little I could pay yearly if I preferred. All I could think about was how hard money is to come by at the end of the year and I decided I'd rather pay quarterly.

Well, I usually wait to pay until a day or two before my deadline. If my taxes are due on October 20th. I won't even think of paying them until I'm within a few days of my deadline. Same thing this last quarter. I was planning on paying them when I got back from my girls weekend away on the 18th and 19th of the month. Before I returned home, I had learned of Becky's suicide and taxes were the last thing on my mind.

Last week I realized I had never paid them and I went through my files and got my figures in order. I had about $50 in my paypal account so I figured I had plenty of money; even if there was a penalty for being late I didn't figure it would be that bad. When I logged on to the tax site I was supprised to see two different quarters of taxes still to be paid for 2008; the second and third quarters.

When I checked the second quarters to see what was going on I was SHOCKED to see a bill for almost $200. Somehow I had missed paying my tax bill and they had applied an "assumed" tax of $100 and then added a late fee of $50 plus a daily accruing interest rate.

I thought I paid them. Well, honestly I didn't think about them at all . . . which lead me to belive I paid them. I've been in a funk for the last . . . 2 years I guess. And it was getting worse the beginning of this year. I finally broke down and went to the doctor, but it took 4-5 months before I felt good enough to get off the medication.

(In a side note on the weird twists of the universe, I stopped taking my anti-depressents 10 days before Becky's death.)

Well, I don't have $200 so I go to file my 3rd quarter taxes figuring at least I'll get them out of the way. Only now I'm a little worried, and I had a right to be. I was able to key in the exact amount of taxes I owed but they assigned a $50 late fee. So even my third quarter taxes were over $80 . . . which I didn't have.

I tried backing out of pay your tax bill and selecting just to make a payment but it wouldn't let me. So I just back out of the system with knowledge I owe back taxes of almost $300 that are accuring daily. The tax man taketh . . .

It took me 2 or 3 days to get enough money to go back online and pay off the 3rd quarter taxes. The very next morning a collector from the Tax appraisers office calls to see about my late 2 quarters. I explain I paid off the 3rd quarter the night before and would pay the other as soon as I generated the funds.

Two days later a cusotmer orders over $200 in leather; largest leather order I've ever had. As soon as her payment clears, I log on the go to pay off my 2nd quarter taxes. When I log on the link looks different than it did previously. When I select to pay the 2nd quarter taxes it pulls up a standard page -- no presumed tax, no penalty. I add my tax figures and it does charge me the by day penalty. But instead of the $180-$200 bill I was expecting I only paid like $38. The tax man givith back. . .

Next year, I am definatly going to pay once a year.