Near Intersection of I-35 & I-90 Southern Mn. | Yes, it can be frustrating. Mine is this morning at 9:00. I was going through my checklist on Sunday to make certain I had all my forms. I noticed I did not have the rather extensive 1099 from an Investment firm. I then remembered that I need to get some one these online as I have elected to go that route.
I found the website of the place that does this for the firm and got signed in with my username and password. I looked around under various tabs and found information that pertained to me. After searching under some more tabs I found the one for Tax Documents. My 1099 was there and appeared on my computer screen as a PDF. It consisted of some 16 pages. There was a summary page and then various breakdown pages referring to individual investments. So this was what I needed. I indicated to my computer that I wanted to print out the .pdf. The printer started, I walked away for a cup of coffee and later returned. I returned and took the pages out of the printer.
I looked through them and noticed that there was an area that was blacked out on each page. It was as if after the page was printed someone had come along with a black marker and blocked out certain areas. When looking at the Summary page, which was the most important, the entire page had been printed as a large black block so it was unreadable. Most of the other pages were usable since a portion of a heading may have been the only portion blacked out.
I tried various combinations of closing the website and reopening it and printing just the summary page as a test. Everytime the information on the screen was very readable but the same areas (the whole summary page) were blacked out. Since the tax appointment was Wednesday and Monday a holiday I was in a bind.
I tried various setttings to print out the important summary page with no success but burned up a lot of ink. Finally out of desperation, I took a picture of the screen with my iPhone and printed that. This came out quite clearly but was small. The page only had 8 numbers on it and the rest of the categories were all zero. I hand wrote the values and headings on the side of the picture and drew arrows to the appropriate lines. So after a few hours of struggle I had what I considered a working copy.
Later that Sunday, I got to thinking I hadn't gotten the U.S. Mail on Saturday. I went to the mailbox and found a printed copy from the company of the 1099 I had struggled with. Had I checked the mail on Saturday or Sunday before I started the online search I would have saved considerable time.
I also have investments with Poet Bio-refining. Due to their structure, I get K-1's from Minnesota, Iowa, Kansas and Indiana. Some of these have minor withholding so my gal just skips them since the cost to prepare their forms exceeds the withholding. Some of the states require that the form is filled out which results in a minor tax obligation which is generally less than the cost of having the form completed.
I expect my taxes to be much less than some former years due to the poor crop prices. At least the poor prices are good for something. |
Tax season is the pitts
