mike-owens.com

If you haven't stopped by the site in a while, check out the new Web Design and Broadcast pages. I wanted to a place to display some of my past work, and this seemed to be the best way to do it. It's certainly not extensive, but I think it's a good start.

Coverage from the Star Tribune, Pioneer Press and Minneapolis St. Paul Business Journal.

I love seeing redevelopment, especially when it's in my neighborhood. If you combine this with the proposed St. Paul Saints stadium, St. Paul could really be happening in the summer. (Restrictive airport safety concerns, not to mention an uninterested state legislature, could really put a damper on the Saints' plans, of course.) Either way, I wish the new nonprofit group best of luck in promoting Lowertown.

Google Maps does a lot of things well, but one thing that it doesn't do is search for tennis courts. I was trying to set up a game with some friends, but we couldn't figure out a good place to play. I decided I'd put Google's satellite imagery to good use, and here's what I came up with.

View Twin Cities Tennis Courts in a larger map

We were looking for someplace in-between St. Paul and Minneapolis, so that's the area I focused on. Perhaps eventually, I'll scour the rest of the metro area. For now, enjoy what I have, and get out and play some tennis!

It's that time of year again, and being the first year I have held a full-time job, my taxes were a little more complicated than normal. Actually, they were way more complicated than taxes should be.

I remember thinking this same thought two months ago when Obama's cabinet nominees Tim Geithner and Tom Daschle ran into tax problems. I don't think either of them were committing outright fraud, though there is room for debate on that topic. Whatever your opinion, it was either an oversight on the part of the nominees and their accountants, or the deliberate cover-up was made possible by our complex tax system and low audit rate. In either case, I have to wonder: Why is the system so complex that accountants are needed to figure personal income taxes? I understand things are going to get complicated for large corporations with complex systems of subsidiaries and investments, but why should individual income tax returns be so complicated?

Before I'm accused of being anti-tax, I'll let you know that I'm one of the 61 percent of Americans who believe their income taxes are fair, according to Gallup. However, here was my situation.

I worked for half of the year at a college work-study position in Iowa while holding a permanent residence in Illinois. Then I moved to Minnesota to start a new full-time job after graduation. (If you're following me, you've counted four tax returns I had to file - federal plus three states.) To make matters more complicated, I got married last summer. My wife was an Iowa resident before we moved to Minnesota. (Meaning we're up to five returns between us now, as I'll explain.) So, we filed joint federal and Minnesota returns. That was the easy part.

Actually, filing the federal return electronically turned out to be a challenge. My income from last year, which is one of the factors used to confirm my identity online (don't get me wrong, I'm all for security), was incorrectly entered into the IRS's system. Luckily, I was preparing our federal return about two months ago, so a phone call and a five minute wait for a real person at the IRS resolved the issue. You have to enter the income filed on your original return (read: the first number input into the IRS system), not on any corrected returns. However, I only filed one return last year. Somewhere along the line, there must have been a typo by the person entering the data (I filed a paper return last year). To the IRS system, my actual income was listed as a corrected return. The system wanted me to input a number that I had no way of knowing even existed. Props to the IRS for good customer service (at least in February)! I certainly can't get a real person on the phone from say, Comcast, in five minutes.

Minnesota's Nice

The Minnesota return was actually easy. One easy form plus a part-year resident form and we were good to go! Nice work Minnesota!

Now, on to the complicated part...

We used TurboTax for our federal taxes since it was free to file electronically. However, we weren't about to pay $25 each to file in each of the other states, so we did it the old fashioned way: on paper. It turns out our situation was a little too complicated for TurboTax to handle anyway.

At first, I thought I wouldn't have to file an Illinois return, since neither of us worked in Illinois during the year. However, it turns out Illinois and Iowa have a reciprocal agreement whereby an Illinois resident working in Iowa should have Illinois income tax withheld from his check. (And vice versa, of course.) The operative word in that sentence is should. My W-2 indicated that Iowa tax had been withheld and a quick check with the student work office at college confirmed this. So I had paid taxes to Iowa that should have been paid to Illinois. So, I filled out my Illinois taxes (and a part-year resident form, of course) and sent the state of Illinois a check for the money I earned while working in Iowa. Strange but true. The tricky part about this return was that I had to file as married filing separately, even though my federal return was married filing jointly. Some more figuring was required, but I managed. I just hope they aren't expecting a return from my wife because she had no affiliation with Illinois whatsoever. The part-year resident instructions seemed to assume that filers would be full-year residents with a spouse who moved into Illinois. They didn't mention specifically that I could be a part-year resident who moved out of the state after getting married.

On to Iowa...

I knew I needed to simply get my money back in Iowa. Even though it was a small sum, I thought the paperwork should be straight, even though I could live without the money. So I filed a return, following the instructions for "Illinois tax withheld in error." Because I was supposed to write this on the face of the return, I decided my wife had better file a separate return in Iowa to avoid confusion, even though Iowa technically allows spouses to file separate returns on the same form. (Convenient, no?). So, we filed one more return and part-year resident form for my wife, and we were done.

Now that wasn't so easy, was it?

Sure, I could've gone to H&R Block or any number of tax preparation places, but there's something about doing it yourself. It's the principle of it. A college graduate should be able to file his own taxes. If not, perhaps the system is too complicated. Now, I've got my fingers crossed that I did everything right!

A better solution

I think there should be a better solution. TurboTax is a fine piece of software, and it did a fine job with my federal taxes. Even though I had no intention of using it to file state taxes, I went through the steps to see what it thought my returns would be. It didn't catch the fact that as an Illinois resident I should've paid taxes in Illinois instead of Iowa. Little things like that make it too hard for one software company to keep up with every state's laws. I also wouldn't pay $25 per state (that would've been $75 for me this year!) to file what I can file for free on paper. Call me cheap, but it's the principle of it, again. I don't blame TurboTax for making some money. I do think, however, that the IRS should have a website that allows anyone to file for free. Wouldn't it be in their best interest to have an easy way for taxpayers to, well, pay taxes? Wouldn't it make sense for everyone to be able to file directly at irs.gov instead of one of any number of private websites? Why should I trust one of those websites with my personal information anyway? Look where TurboTax got Tim Geithner! (Perhaps it's not a great example, since he's the Treasury Secretary despite having to pay back taxes...)

The same policy should go for every state. There should be one easy place to pay taxes online. For free. At the state's revenue department website. For all situations. Some states (see: Illinois) allow you to pay online, but not for part-year residents or other special circumstances. I think all circumstances that are covered on paper forms should be covered online. And it needs to be one location for everyone (e.g. tax.illinois.gov), not a bunch of links to commercial tax preparation websites that may or may not be free depending on your situation.

Some in the tech world may argue that they trust private companies to do this work more than they trust the government. To that I say the government can get things right. The feds keep track of my federal student loans pretty well. I think they could do the same for taxes. I mean, it's the government...keeping track of taxes... Sure, there would be issues along the way, such as the issue I had with a typo in the IRS computer system, but that's why you keep the call centers open. And there's always the good old fashioned paper return in case things really go awry.

I think it's worth a try.