I had this entry all written last week, but the blog site was acting funny that day, and when I submitted it, it just went off into the oblivion somewhere. Was too annoyed to retype something right away, but I am trying really hard to get caught up today.

So anyways, apparently our $8000 some dollar tax return was a bit too good to be true after all. You see, that tax form our DD said was from her school, the one we thought we already had, was really from her 529K that we just opened this year. Entering that form changed the picture a bit because apparently, you do not qualify for education tax credits if you pay for education expenses using a 529K. Huh? What the heck is the point then? Well okay, I get that they are tax deferred and gain interest if you start when they're young. Ours was more of a savings account tool that would penalize withdrawing funds for non-education expenses. A disincentive we felt our spend thrifty daughter needed. (To be fair, she's done quite well with it.) None the less, our tax return will be at least $2000 less than we had thought due to losing the credit. And I have to amend.

Really, it hardly matters because due to our mortgage interest credit and congress's ineptitude, our pending tax return will be delayed until lord only knows when anyways. I just hope they don't realize our mistake and allow me to fix it instead of holding the fund until I do (or auditing us!) because who knows how much longer that will take then. Had originally thought that check would be coming late this month but now we're thinking more like April. Boo!

Eventually I need to figure out how to adjust our with holdings so that our returns aren't so big. Our tax situation has changed so much over the past 4 years though that its hard to sort it all out. Buying a home, starting a small business, getting married, changing jobs, promotions, having twins, sending a child to college (while still paying on my own student loans). Turbo tax informs me that due to all these things, our effective tax rate is only 4.4% right now. So our checkbook may have taken quite a hit from all that, but we're beating Warren Buffet's tax rate, so we must be good! Probably makes us part of Romney's 47% though.