Well, I filed the taxes this morning, and for the second year I filed the fed taxes electronically with TaxCut, and for the Maryland state taxes I used TaxCut to prepare the return and then filed online with Maryland’s free iFile system. Net cost: $15.95 fed eFile fee – $15.95 H&R Block eFile rebate, + free Maryland iFile, = $0. The iFile system works very well, and the numbers I get from it match the numbers I get from TaxCut, which I find comforting. There are a couple little niggling problems with it; namely, you have to pick a password and then remember it from year to year, for an app that you only use once a year (so of course, I couldn’t remember the password I chose last year, and had to reset it); and the PDF form download they provide doesn’t work with my Mac or my Linux boxes. But aside from that, I’m happy with it, and they claim that using it saves taxpayer dollars. I’m all for that.
On another note, I’m fresh off attending the most exciting college basketball game of my life yesterday, the D.C. Regional final where George Mason upset UConn to reach the Final Four. This is what college basketball is all about, it’s why we buy the tickets, and I’m already lining up to get tickets for next year. And the game had quite a local angle to it, with 70% of the starting 10 players from Maryland. It’s too bad all this talent has to go to out-of-state teams. There are a lot of Division I teams in Maryland (UMBC is one of them), none of them much to write home about. Don’t get me wrong, I love the Terps, but it’d be nice to see some other strong local teams.