i woke up this morning to finally do my taxes. this year, like last year, i'm going with taxcut, but for the macintosh this time around. about 2 months ago they'd sent me a cd-rom. i popped it into my computer, figuring the program was already on the disc, but it's actually just a portal that opens up a webpage for you to pay and download the software. for $30 i went with the premium edition (included both federal & state). since i used taxcut last year as well (fiscal 2005), i was able to import that data which saved me some work. after punching in all my MISC-1099 numbers and put in my mortgage interest deduction, i received the bad news: i owed the government $10k.

i played with the numbers to lower the amount but only by a few hundred dollars, not thousands. the thing you have to understand is the past 2 years of freelancing i've been barely squeaking by, always managing to make just enough to pay the bills. taxes was always a distant worry, something to deal with came april. sure, i made quarterly estimated tax payments for 2006, but apparently i owed many times more than i paid.

the good thing is i do have a bunch of work now and money is definitely coming in; the bad thing is that money won't get here until another month at the earliest and by the end of this week i've going to have to completely empty my bank account, maybe even figure out some way to borrow from a credit card or sell some options, at least until i can get my hands on the next paycheck. this sucks because ever since i got paid from my last client, things were starting to look up financially again, and i was even thinking that if i got one more large project, i could have enough money to go traveling again. well, it seems like the IRS has rained on my parade. wasn't enough that i got audited last year; come tax day, they're going to bleed me dry of all my money.

in the evening i went to my parents for dinner. my godmother came by, just having returned from a short vacation in taiwan. she brought over some braised duck she'd made.