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Jean Mlincek is a freelance writer who resides in St. Petersburg, Fla

Filing taxes is no EZ task
by Jean Mlincek
The tax filing deadline is upon me, but I am still holding out in hopes of finding FREE tax help for filing my 2021 taxes. No, I am not a tight-wad; it’s just that I have enough intelligence from my Cro-Magnon ancestry to know I shouldn’t HAVE to pay to report what I have paid, if you know what I mean.
I think congressmen, congresswomen and congress they should have to figure our taxes; that would at least give them something to do. After all, our tax dollars (I wish they would quit using the sin-gular) already pay for their salaries, their shameless pay hikes, their recesses and excesses, their health insurance, their yachts, and their .05-hr. work days. Hmm. Let’s elect a taxpayer as president one of these years, so that our government more accurately rep-resents the American people.
But I digress. Back to free tax preparation. For the past 12 years, I have relied on AARP to do my taxes, but, bless them, their volunteer tax preparers are down to about 3 per 18,000 filers per location, thanks to two years of Covid. In an effort to help, they emailed me a list of tax locations within a 50-mile radius, which left me a choice of one.
Problem was, that particular site was on a first-come, first-serve basis. Filers were supposed to show up an hour before tax help began, which would have been 11:30 a.m. I thought I was doing great showing up at 10 a.m., but some folk were signing up at 5 a.m. I might do that to see Donald Trump (just kidding), but to file taxes? Not on your life! I’m not fully functional until 3:01 p.m., and that’s on a good day!
I got tired of driving back and forth, back and forth to the first-come, first-serve location only to be turned away, so I decided I would NOT make another useless trip . . . unless the government gives me “frequent-filer” miles.
So, I decided I would do my own taxes--uh--until I saw a 113-page instruction booklet for a 2-page tax form. I knew this couldn’t be good. By page 25, line 2b, I decided to call it quits. Why? It suggested I see Pub. 550 for “reporting interest on market discount bonds and adjustments for amoritizationable premiums”. Yeah, right! The only “pub” I wanted to see after
That instruction was the local one!

That left me with one final alternative. E-file. Which, supposedly, offered free filing to those who use the simple tax form. That would be simple me. I am not ashamed to admit that nothing is EZ for me; nothing! I read the online instructions for E-file with a sense of horror (that’s HORROR, not humor, although, technically, humor is probably the correct word).
First of all, I needed to upload a selfie, take a picture of my W-2, calculate any capital gains, transport a copy of my 2020 return, eat liver for dinner, give blood at my nearest blood bank, and swear by the hair on my chinny-chin-chin that all my information was copacetic, and that, to the best of my knowledge, I hadn’t been around anyone who has or who has had Covid.
And all that is only AFTER you create an account and a password, which, for me--excuse the pun--would be a bit taxing.
It is amazing what our government puts we taxpayers through! I say Enough is Enough!
Jean Mlincek is a freelance writer who resides in St. Petersburg, Fla

Florida News
Florida Jobless Claims Again Below 4,000

Florida had its third consecutive week with fewer than 4,000 first-time unemployment claims, according to a report released Thursday by the U.S. Department of Labor. The agency estimated that Florida had 3,730 new unemployment applications last week, down from 3,830 during the week that ended March 5. Florida had 3,328 claims during the week ending Feb. 26. This is the first time since at least 2006 that Florida has recorded three consecutive weeks below 4,000 claims. Florida has averaged 4,100 new claims over the past four weeks. The federal report came after the state Department of Economic Opportunity last week announced Florida’s unemployment rate in December and January was 3.5 percent. The state’s December rate had initially been projected at 4.4 percent before annual revisions by the Department of Labor. With the revisions, Florida’s overall job totals were back to similar levels as before the COVID-19 pandemic crashed into the economy in early 2020. The state in mid-January had an estimated 364,000 people out of work from a labor force of 10.448 million. Florida will update the employment numbers --- reflecting mid-February conditions--- on March 25.

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