Unlike found cake, which Tycho cannot abide, I am all about enjoying found money. Consequently, I generally like tax season, as it typically results in me getting some (modest) bit of cash back to keep debt at bay ot buy some shiny things.

This year, up until yesterday, has been a bit of a nightmare. The saga began two fridays ago when we gathered up our little bundles of tax information and wandered down to the local Git Ya Money depot. Ed's taxes are always very easy. A couple of T4s, a question here and there, and some money comes back. Mine always look much uglier with the assessments from various provinces, education credits, investment income, RRSP deductions, and all the little recipets I amass during the year that I imagine might be useful. Hence, I take great pleasure in handing my tax man a pile of papers and asking him to make it all go away.

This year, I was told a few things in my original consultation that were rather annoying. First, that none of my RRSPs have ever been filed, and that I had never had any moving expenses claimed. Tax Jim, our rep, offered to do a series of adjustments (for a mere $20 apiece) if we got all the relevent reciepts going back years. I found this surprising but not impossible. We scheduled another meeting for this past Friday, but when we showed up with all the relevent reciepts, our clearly busy Tax Jim gathered everything in a pile, hustled us out the door, and told us to come back the next day (Saturday) to sign off on everything. We did. Ed ended up with a modest return, while I ended up owing money.

Something felt off. On a hunch, I spoke to my previous tax-goddess in Windsor, who told me everything absolutely had been filed in the relevant year and that severl other things sounded amiss. I called CRA and, over their tip line, easily found out that she was right. I called the depot back, donned my Angry Walschots Voice, asked to speak to someone In Charge and explained how I had been wronged.

It seemed the taxes had been done wrong stem to stern -- so wrong that the word 'audit' was bandied about, which made me want to lose consciousness. It seems that Tax Jim is actually Used Car Salesman Jim most of the time, and after taking a few classes is allowed to work as Tax Jim for some extra coin suring the tax season crunch. This time around, I spoke to Senior Accountant Don, who slowly got angrier and angrier as we discovered exactly how badly our taxes had been bungled up.

In the end, I am getting a little money back, Ed is getting MUCH MORE money back, and we don't have to pay for a blasted thing. I rather wish it hadn't taken a week and a half of ARG! to get organzied, but I'll console myself by, instead of being very adult with the money and investing it, what glorious shiny things it could potentially net us. Curse my responsibility! I want a food processor.