OMG! It's almost time to tackle those dreaded 1040 forms – again! In just a couple of months, it's again time to file our taxes. While we have until April 15th to get it all together, most people prefer to get it done early, particularly if you're getting a refund. We hear talk of another stimulus check, but nothing you can take to the bank yet. We can only hope. When you're just thinking about filing your taxes, it's only an impending headache.

I don't know about you, but I'd rather clean my oven twenty times than do my taxes. It all starts with the Escondido 1040 tax form. The road to near insanity follows close behind. Every year, the booklet, along with the 1040 forms arrives like a chunk of lead in the mailbox. Usually, it goes in my desk's in basket to fester for a while. Each time I see it, I avert my eyes. I don't want to know it's there. Yes, I want my refund and no, I don't want to read the book.

Whoever is responsible for writing the booklet and organizing the San Diego 1040 form is absolutely clueless as a writer. Then again, maybe they do it on purpose. Does the tax man have stock in Advil(TM)? Yes, I know there is plenty of tax software out there. For several years, I got a break from reading the booklet and hoping to place the correct figure on the correct line of the 1040 form. I answered the questions and the software did the rest.

Then, a few years ago, I got burned by the software. It apparently did not include some piece of information in the tax return that was submitted, resulting in months of waiting for my refund, along with numerous telephone conversations, arguing with IRS agents. They ended up slapping a small penalty on me, just because they felt like it, I suppose. The household name tax software had guaranteed to back their calculations if the IRS had a problem with a return.

\As it turned out, it was just too much trouble to try to enforce their guarantee over such a small amount. That's when I went back to reading the booklet and filling out the San Diego 1040 forms and all of their little worksheets and schedules myself. I guess my major gripe with the booklet and 1040 forms is that they are not written for native English readers. It must be a special dialect of tax man English. With most publications, you start on page one and continue, page by page.

The 1040 booklet may spring a calculation worksheet on you any old place. “If line 40 is less than line 20, go to the worksheet on page 52.” OK. I stick a post-it on the spot where I left off on the 1040 form, so as not to lose my place and my mind. The worksheet instructs me to plug in my adjusted gross income and multiply it by .92, then divide that result by 150. Now I must subtract something from something else. If it's less than whatever, I don't qualify for whatever and am redirected to the place I came from on page 8.

The long and short of it is that, by the time you've navigated this maze of confusion, you have no idea what any of the numbers actually represent. So now, I'm not sure that my Escondido 1040 tax forms are accurate! After three attempts, my numbers still came out the same. Did I send it in? Nope. I went to my local tax preparer. She did both Fed and State returns in about ten minutes flat! Her calculations increased my refund by a few bucks, due to a minor error on my part. Guess who's filling out my 1040 form this year?