Positive feelings about taxes, for once

I've spent the last couple weeks gathering up records so we could file our taxes. Since we bought a house in 2009, this is our first year itemizing our deductions, and we had quite a few things to track, including:

• Mortgage interest
  
• Moving expenses
• Home office expenses
• Health costs (since my surgery cost so much, we met the threshold for the above-the-line deduction)
• State tax
• Property tax
• Charitable donations
  

I managed to gather every necessary receipt and record, and they are all now in one folder. All I was waiting on was my W-2, and it arrived yesterday, so I devoted last night to preparing our taxes.

Originally, since our taxes were complicated this year with all the deductions, plus our partial-year residency in two different states, I thought we'd hire an accountant to do this. But with the spending freeze and all, and knowing that doing your taxes is a matter of good records, careful reading of instructions, a bit of math, and filling out forms, I didn't see how we could justify the cost.

It took me a few hours to do it all, with the various forms, all the careful adding and percentages (especially for the home office stuff), the figuring out our exemptions and deductions in each state, and so on. But at the end of the day I am nearly positive that I did it all correctly. All the forms are filled out. Everything is carefully documented in one folder in case we ever get audited. We have not overstated or understated everything. It is accurate.

(As a side note, can I just say that I love living in Colorado? Not only is their income tax low, but they have an online form that does all the math for you and files your return electronically at the end. The opposite of DC, where taxes are high and the online form only allows married couples to file jointly, whereas the paper form allows married couples to file separately on the same form. Doing this saves a good amount of money when your incomes are unequal, because DC tax is progressive and you can allocate the deductions however you want, so I can give Torsten all of mine and pull him into a lower tax bracket.)

Turns out, we're due the biggest refund of our lives. I guess there's a silver lining to all that mortgage interest, huh? And this refund could not be coming at a better time, since yesterday was Torsten's last day at his old job. As of today

Now to spend the next six months obsessively checking our bank account every day, keeping an eye out for those direct deposits.