Taxman

Even though I spent only 42 days of the 2006 tax year resident in the United States, I still had to file a full tax return. Actually, I had to file two returns: one for Federal Tax, and the other for State and City Tax. Oh, and I'll have to submit a UK Tax return in due course as well.

Part of my relocation package gives me the "benefit" of having my tax return prepared by one of the Big Four consultancies. This involved them sending me a letter requesting that I fill in all my relevant information on their specially developed website, and then they would do the rest.

I dutifully did this by the deadline they had imposed and then everything went quiet for about six weeks. Three working days before the Internal Revenue Service deadline I received a FedEx package with my completed return, all ready for me to sign and dispatch.

I noted a few things:

• I wasn't convinced that the numbers were correct. It's too late to delay sending the forms back, but I may have to file an amendment after the fact.
• Given the very tight timescales, what would have happened if I was travelling in the days before the 17 April deadline?
• Best of all, the boxes I filled out on the website seemed to map almost exactly one-to-one to the boxes on the form!

It would appear that tax does indeed have to be taxing.