It’s April 15th, you say? Oh, swell.
You may have caught a tweet from me sometime in late February, annoyed by the fact that we received an additional 1099 about a week after I e-filed our taxes. “Hey, unnamed entity that was way too late in delivering this…you were supposed to have this in my hands by the end of January. Thanks for the effort.”
Great. Color me amended.
Since we owed to the feds and got a refund from the state, TurboTax allowed me to delay payment until a later date but get my state refund right away. Meanwhile, I went into TurboTax and amended the return properly to account for the additional income. For some reason, however, it wouldn’t let me e-file the amended return. What’s the rush? I’ve got over a month.
Fast forward to today, when I realize that I still haven’t filed the amended return. Uh oh. OK, I’ll get home from work and figure it out. Long story short, I finally realize that you can’t e-file an amended return. Am I going to be one of those losers who has to go to the post office on April 15th to file their taxes? Um, yes.
Crank out 20-30 sheets of paper, put way too much postage on the envelopes (I thought leftover Christmas stamps from 2007 were appropriate), write the checks, and head out a little after 9:00 p.m. Thank you Sun Prairie post office for not having anything set up for us IRS idiots. Off to Madison I go.
Not surprisingly, the main east side post office was hopping at 9:20 on a Wednesday night. What I didn’t understand was the very long line at the automated postal center (APC). In case you haven’t been to your local USPS recently, the APC allows you to weigh and mail packages without having to wait in line. As you might imagine, it was the only way to purchase postage at this late hour. I preferred my strategy – use way too many old stamps and make sure it gets marked with today’s date. 
There was a kind older woman at a card table with her stamp pad who happily stamped both envelopes for me and added it to her growing stack. I gave one last look to everyone who hadn’t moved an inch in the APC line and headed back to my car.
Really, it wasn’t too terrible of an experience. If nothing else it should make for an interesting blog post…