Of taxing taxes

Yes, it is taxing. As in the whole dang experience drives me round the bend! I will admit that i have a more complicated tax situation than a number of my friends. My wife and I both have employment income. Wife also has home based business income which means the dreaded 1099 and keeping track of the expenses associated with the aforementioned business. But I am used to that. We have had that set up for 7 or 8 years now. Maybe nine. My brain is mush at present.

Then in 2004 our state allowed us to marry. OK cool. We did. We had been married in our own minds since 1978 anyway, but making it legal afforded a few important legal benefits to my wife. Plus it was very important to my kids. It served to make the tax season even more fun for me. You see, the federal government does not of course recognize our marriage so I have to do two single returns for the feds. The problem is that turbo tax would then merge that info into your state tax return. This is not possible now because it would list the wrong classification for us--single instead of married filing either separately or jointly. Soooooo I get to take all the tax stuff and do it AGAIN as a federal married return that I don't submit to the feds but then merge over and submit to the state. Isn't that just fun and special?

So I spent the morning doing that, and sent things over to the appropriate agencies via e-file. And a few hours later got back a message that my federal return was denied but my state return was accepted. I got this right as I was about to drive middle son to a values retreat so I couldn't delve into the joyful specifics till I returned from dropping him off. The reason is that the IRS is saying that one of my children (I think my youngest) Social Security number does not match the number of the adoption tax credit form. I suspect that this somehow ties to the fact that when we first adopted her we didn't have a SSN before it was time to do taxes in 2006. So I got a tax ID number for her. I filed. Life was good. The next year I had the SSN number. I filed taxes. I used the SSN number. Life was still good. This year I received notice that the tax ID number was being cancelled unless I requested that it be renewed. I didn't renew it because I have not been using it; I have used her SSN. But I suspect that somehow this is where the glitch is occuring. Fixing this should be a thrill a minute.