Finished Filing My 2009 Income Taxes!

God almighty, I hate it when I have to pay both the federal and state government!

The double whammy!

It sucks.

If I had the money I'd dump some last minute 2008 contributions into my IRA to reduce my 2008 AGI, but I have to buy a car for my daughter in the coming weeks, and I can't afford to do both.

One thing that took me by surprise this year is that the Child Tax Credit ends in the year in which your child turns seventeen. That's a thousand dollars right there in the IRS column - argh. I would have thought the credit would have extended to age eighteen.

We have to support our children to that age, and they get much more expensive to support as they get older, so why does the credit end at sixteen? Probably some damned Republican lawmaker at work. I can hear him now, "Gotta get em' into the army. We don't want to coddle the little bastards".