Taxes Due

I have been so busy the last couple of weeks that I have really neglected the blog. Nothing has really inspired me lately. I think part of that is the change of seasons. About a week ago the 'cloud' moved in. The eternal gray cloud that comes in Mid October and doesn't part ways with Baden until late March or early April.

This week my taxes were due for the U.S. I am always amazed at how tax firms that are supposed to be professionals at preparing taxes seem to make very basic mistakes in my taxes every year. I guess this is the age of Turbo Tax tax preparation. I get a sense that the thought behind tax preparation has left the industry over a decade ago and now its point, click, type, print and file.

This year was a best mistake yet. Despite a clear note that I work in Switzerland, and so does my wife, and that salaries for 2008 were reported to the tax preparer in Swiss Francs, the tax preparer did not convert the income from CHF to USD when entering the data on the US tax forms. I do not know the rules for what exchange rates to use so I always attach a note, stating that salaries are in CHF. Given that my U.S. tax preparer does quite a few tax returns for expats I would have thought this was basic.

End result, because of exchange rates at the time it looked like I made 15%-20% more than I actually did. I surely did not want the government getting some extra magic money because of my tax preparers mistake.

As taxes are due for late returns on 15 Oct there was a series of phone calls, corrections, and very large PDF files flying across the internet this week to get things sorted out. The tax firm handled my complaint well, but really that kind of mistake should have never happened in the first place.