WORKING ON PAPEWORK EARLY TO SAVE MONEY ON REAL ESTATE TAXES - OOPS A WEEK LATE

My apologies - this post was written for and I thought I posted it on September 16.  While posting my September 23 post, I found this was still marked as draft -

  I am working on paperwork for a real estate credit that husband and I are entitled since we are over 65 and have an income on the low side.  This paperwork has to be filled in and filed annually.  Last year's filing ran something like 125 pages.  This is due to change they made last year.  We have to provide proof of all our business income and expenses.  The paperwork was crazy before this requirement, but with it….

At least this year I knew these extra records would be needed, so before I put away our financial records from 2019 I pulled out and scanned the needed paperwork into the computer – or at least I thought I did all of it.  I even made sure that the expenses for our two extremely small businesses added up to the tax return numbers which came from my computer software.  

The form to fill in and mail (or drop off) with the papers needed came and I started, slowly putting it all together.  I have combined various sections of what is needed with cover pages for each in my computer as pdf files.  It should not be hard, I had already scanned in the papers – right?  

General proof of income – 1099s and such, no problem.  Medical expenses (we can subtract this from our income in the calculation)  I had most of them ready – we have to have printouts, they do not accept paid bills or copies of checks that paid them as proof.  I had contacted and have this printouts from our medical insurance companies which is most of the expense.  In normal years we go into our pharmacy and they hand us printouts and we also bought eyeglasses last year and had planned to do same with the optician.  But this is not a normal year.  The optician is mailing the copies of our records, I still have to telephone our pharmacy about same.  

I had moved on to putting together the information from our businesses.  I thought I had it all – I had scanned them into the computer and just needed to finish assembling them.  But, neither business' receipts match the computer records of what they should be.  They are small amounts, but this process is so crazy – they may disallow the $1.90 here or the $20 there.  Hopefully if they do it will not affect the exemption amount by much.

Imagine having to put together all the expenses just from your car and having to make copies of all of them.  In this case I have to also give a breakdown of how much is from miles driven for husband's business and how many much for miles driven for mine and apportion the cost of each expense (which was already done for our income taxes).  How many small credit card receipts for gas do you end up with in a year?

While the cut off date to file this form and supporting paperwork is January 2, 2021, I don't like to wait until the last minute to deal with it.  Last year when we needed to go and bring in the paperwork to the county offices was when husband needed to get teeth added to his upper denture (also includeable as a medical expense for IRS and for this) and we ended up having the impression of his teeth taken and then driving to the county office – where he would have had to wait in the car anyway (no place to park), but in this case did not want to go in within without his teeth also.  So, since we are stuck in the house due to the corona virus pandemic anyway, I have been working on putting all this together and filing in the forms since August.  

We were discussing how we file the paperwork.  We used to mail to the county by certified mail.  In 2018 we mailed in the 2017 information for the 2019 taxes  (yes, it is terribly confusing) by mail as usual.  Then we received a month or so later a robo phone call from the county executive that we had not filed the papers!  I tried calling the office  - but the answering machine basically said “we are too busy to talk to you, don't bother us”  When I called again later in the day added to that message was “and don't try to come in here as there is no parking”.  This last part being true and has been decades, which was why husband dropped me off and waited in the car.   In a panic we reprinted and assembled everything to bring it to them.  In the interim a story on the news was that they were suppose to send the call to a few people who had filed in the past and had not yet filed, but they sent to every property owner in the county.  Unsure of if we were in the group whose paperwork had not been received, we drove to the office and I waited in their waiting room.  Luckily by the time we went there a couple of days after the call – the lines were no longer 5 hours long as they were the day after the mistaken calls.  They did have our paperwork.  

Last year we decided we go there (as we did) and turn in the paperwork in person and receive a receipt from them for it and did so.  We planned to continue to do so.  But we are now trying to decide since we are not going out due to Covid 19 – do we venture into the post office (that we don't go to, even overnight) to pick up our mail or do we go to the county office where I will wait my turn for what might be hours – but we will know for sure that they have our paperwork?  (Yes, the difference in what we pay in property taxes, especially the school taxes, with and without the exemption is enough to make it worthwhile.)  

Hopefully I will soon be done with the paperwork and we can decide which we will do and when.  I am guessing the early in the season for this, the fewer people who will be waiting, so I will try to finish as quickly as I can.  I did send an email to the head of the department and asked if they will have drive-up windows for this as they did for people to come in and pay the property taxes.  I don't figure they will or even that I will get an answer.

THOUGHT OF THE WEEK -

Use the time you are stuck in the house to get work done.  I have been catching up all sorts of paperwork and household chores that I have put off, well, for years since I am home.  Our shower soon might be even clean enough to actually not worry about getting dirtier when one takes one.  :-)

My thoughts and prayers both to those in the United States west where there are terrible fires and those in the southeast who have been going through yet another major hurricane this week.

Mom's house and doctors plus stored away Christmas

Mom is taking much of everyone's time again.  Former NYC Mayor Ed Koch once said of his mother - “One mother can take care of 6 children, but 6 children cannot take care of one mother”.  It is true.  I have 2 sisters, we each have a husband, but there is a niece and nephew – that is 8 adults to divide up taking care of mom.

The family house is cleared out – mostly due to my sisters, brother-in-laws, and niblings.  ( I had invented a genderless word for nieces and nephews combined as there should be one – niblings.  When I posted this on some group that I am on, someone replied that someone before me had come up with a word for nieces and nephews combined – guess what it was – yes, they also came up with niblings.  I am now spreading the word in hope that this long missing word becomes common. Now I need a common word for aunts and uncles – any ideas out there?)  There is a broker showing the house now.  So, new problems come up. 

The family house is in the county and township as husband and I live in. The county (and included townships and a city) has had for decades ongoing problems with the local real estate taxes and how properly the houses are assessed for the value to be taxed,  In attempting to fix one problem an entirely new one arose.  One can “grieve” their assessment (value of the house to be used for the real estate tax calculations) which means that one files with the county and says that the amount they say the house is worth is wrong and it should be less.  There is no downside to this – they cannot raise your assessment, only lower it if they agree with you.  One can do this one's self or one can use one of several companies which do the paperwork and deal with the county for you.  Husband and I have done this for a long time with a company and our house value has always been lowered.  Mom has not done in the past until last year (which is for next year's taxes) as she was afraid of losing her senior  partial exemption from part of the school tax (part of the real estate taxes), though I had assured her it would not.   

Two problems arose with the sale of the house related to the real estate taxes.  First one is that since mom has this senior exemption she amount she pays for real estate taxes is probably less than someone buying her house will pay (it based on income and being over 65 plus one cannot have children in school).  The second is that the broker told my sister that mom's taxes are terribly high – higher than the neighbor next door with the same model house, with additions that mom does not have.  So yesterday my sister emailed me for help with same – since I am in the same county/township and know the system.  First thing I did was take the copies of mom's tax bills that my sister emailed to me and add up what the tax would be without the senior exemption – took a little time as I had to add up all the lines of taxes – once I had the total percentage of the taxes that are charged all I had to do was multiply the assessed value (a small percentage of the actual value of the property/house) by this total percent of taxes and there it was.  Even with both the school and other real estate taxes added together it was much less than the broker said it was.  Also I telephoned the company which is handling the appeal and they said that due to the county revaluing all the properties in an attempt to even off the assessments mom's assessment will go down as she had not appealed her taxes while other had.  I emailed all this to my sister and mentioned that the broker should be able to figure out what the full real estate taxes on a property is. 

Well, a thought occurred to me today  - there is another house in the county, in a different township, which has the same address.  We found this out one year a couple of decades ago when mom's check to pay her real estate taxes was returned to her marked that the taxes had already been paid by someone else.  I was going to check on same, but found an email from my sister that she had already thought of this and the huge high taxes (the taxes on this house are so high compared to other houses on the street that it does not make sense at all and there will be problems selling the house) and checked – the taxes the broker has is about $6,000 a year more than per mom's bill or on line and is actually the real estate taxes for the other house with the same address.  My sister will tell this to the broker, as well as pointing out that the value of the house for the next year's taxes (starts in September) will be lower as value of the house is lower and I will get a letter from a the company handling the grieving of the assessment saying that same is being done.  (Based on mail I receive from them for our house this should not be hard and mom should actually have had this paperwork at home – but her records were lacking as well as the letters might be in the stacks of papers I still have here to go through.)

At the same time I was relaxing from taking mom to the various doctors and thinking “Good, we have time now and can get her to a plastic surgeon for the possible cancer growths on her face and get to Costco for hearing aids .  Oh, well,  It is about 3 months since we last took her to the oncologist, the surgeon for her cancer and the cardiologist who put in her replacement pacemaker.  Guess what – they all either wanted her back in 3 months or wanted blood work done.  So I have an appointment set up with her surgeon.  I asked doctor's staff if mom needed blood work and they had to check with the doctor and get back to me – did so today and I have to call back and give them the info for the “wellness” office at her residence as they will do the blood work there.  I already gave that info to her oncologist – I had given the wellness office two sets of paperwork for blood work in November, they did the first one and apparently lost the second one to be done now.  Hopefully the two sets of tests will be done together so poor mom does not have to be stuck twice for blood.  We have an appointment for to have her pacemaker battery tested at the doctor's office, but they were suppose to set up for when one of their staff goes to mom's residence (lots of heart patients there – not surprising) to do test the pacemaker there.  Have not heard back so I have to make sure they are set up to do that and then cancel the appointment.  So, we are back on the doctors-go-round, luckily the doctor from heck does not need to be seen for a couple of months.

And it is about to be my work busy season – income tax season!

I did manage to take down and store away our small Christmas tree and Christmas stuffed dolls, pillows, and stockings – a small assortment of what I normally put out.  I switched out a set of bear figurines that I keep in the living room and change by month to keep it seasonal and went from Christmas – the bears for same were only half put out on display – to February (Valentine's Day and bear “dressed” as cherry pie for Geo Washington's birthday).  The Christmas ones are all stored away in their boxes.  My Teddy Bear Christmas village never actually was finished and will be partially taken down soon, with some bears added and others rearranged for Valentine's Day.  One can only do what one can do – and this Christmas season was not one that had time to get everything done. 

THOUGHT OF THE WEEK -

Mom's doctors, blood work and related comes first – health over all other things.  

THE SIDE PORCH

I actually got something done this week - last Saturday when we got home I ended up dealing with the porch.  We have a small enclosed entryway to our kitchen door which in the most technical sense is our “porch”.  It is aluminum with screens on the top half of the walls.  It has a shelving unit with cabinet doors on the bottom of it on the wall between the door to the outside (facing the street) and the door to the kitchen.  On the back wall there is my husband’s boyhood work bench.  This has a shelf under it the top which holds a box for recycling of cans and bottles - just stick my hand out the kitchen door and toss in and I stack the newspapers on top of it for same.  There is a small garbage pail between the house wall and the table where I toss the soda bottles for return for deposit.  It also has some other storage items.  The rest of the porch is filled with stuff.  There is a narrow pathway from the door to door. 

What is in it which takes up so much more of the space?  Well, I tossed the plastic chair which was in the far corner years ago so that’s gone. I admit that much of this mess is mine.  I keep empty cardboard boxes to use to put out the recycling.  Our township gave out special green  plastic square boxes to put the recycling in (cans and bottles) when the program first started.  When we bought the house the box came with it.  I would dutifully put it out with our cans and bottles weekly and put the newspapers, tied in a stack (sometimes two stacks or more if I had been clearing out papers or it had been raining heavily or snowing the week before) either next to it or in it every week.  If we have a lot of snow it is a problem putting it out as where it goes cannot be reached if there is mounds of snow - sometimes I will leave it in our driveway cut, sometimes I hold onto it for the next week.  Nice and easy.

I am pretty sure that I mentioned that we live on a main, 4 lane road.  The sanitation workers did not neatly place the box back where it belonged on our property, they would drop it in the road.  Cars would hit it.  Eventually it was in pretty bad shape - even taped back together and it disappeared - my assumption being that the sanitation workers took it.  I called the department and they told me to come and pick up a new one.  So I drove down - about half an hour each way - to get a new box.  In the interim they had made the box larger.  The new box did not fit in the work bench.  Big problem - it did not fit anywhere usable and we could not figure out what to do with it.  Shortly after my sister-in-law was selling her late mother’s house and I had an idea.  My in-laws never believed in recycling so they had their box as originally given to them sitting in the garage.  I took my large one and exchanged it for their smaller one.  Worked well for us and the people in the house would probably have children and need the larger box anyway.  Well at some time since this box also was destroyed by being thrown in the street and disappeared I had to come up with a new idea.  (In the interim the sanitation department had dropped off the new, even larger, full garbage can sized recycling can which sits tossed behind the garage ever since as it would hold 2 months of our cans and bottles.  What really annoyed me about them leaving this can was it was left on the driveway, in front of the house - if only they did that with the boxes when I was using them - at the start of July that year - when people like us are away and it stands there as beacon that the house is empty.)

My solution has been to use cardboard boxes that come into the house to hold the recycling.  The box itself is recyclable so they just take it all.  To do this I hold onto cardboard boxes as we get them - small ones such as cereal boxes are good when I just have 4 soup cans and so on up to larger size boxes which can take a couple (few?) weeks worth when I have not have not been able to put out the recycling. (Really big ones can be cut in half to use for 2 weeks.)  They were all just  tossed and a mess.

I have not had a chance to return soda bottles and cans since doing so at the start of December.  Weather, things that needed to be done, etc. after my embroidery guild meeting had stopped me from me from doing so.  I had 3 large clear garbage bags with same floating about the porch. 

There are also several large spray bottles for poison ivy, killing weeds, etc. floating on the floor of the porch.  A couple of them are empty - but we were not sure how to dispose of them as they are “hazardous substances” and cannot go in the garbage.  (Since clearing the porch out a bit last weekend I have checked and they can only be returned at “STOP” events (stop throwing out poisons).  So we have to make a note and get out early enough to get to one - hopefully the July one as the June one is not near us and the July one is. 

Using a small plastic bag I was going to throw out I moved these into the far corner of the porch after I cleared out a full large garbage bag that was sitting there, I then put the plastic bags of soda bottles behind the bottles so both are out of the way.  The cardboard boxes which were kept were put on top of the same bags.  We had a large garbage bag in the middle of the porch to toss, well, garbage into.  That was moved further into this corner. 

We have a short office paper sized garbage pail in the porch.  I put our spare, sealed bag of snow salt in it and then put the started bag on top of it.  (The other spare bags are in the snow blower shed outside this porch.) 

We have a kitchen sized garbage pail in the porch which holds some of the assorted, brooms and shovels in the porch - I added some more of the lighter weight ones into it.  The three snow shovels should go into that same shed until next winter. 

Well, the porch is not really cleared out (I did not go through the large shelving unit, but much, if not all, of what is on the open shelf areas is needed and I did fell like going into the doored section - especially since I had not intended to do any of this) but it is so much better.  We can easily walk through it. 

The garbage bags were put out by the garbage pail that actually holds garbage outside the house - next to the snowblower shed.  Garbage pick up would be Monday and it could not go out to the curb before Sunday night.  I had 2 large black bags of garbage and a smaller white kitchen can sized one also.  I also had two relatively small filled bags with pieces of our driveway in them.  (One area of our driveway is falling apart and we can keep picking up the pieces as we are afraid that in winter if we use the snow blower it will send the pieces flying.) So I put those two bags out also.  Sunday night when I put all this at the curb I also added the usual kitchen garbage bag.

I am also taking smaller bags of the soda bottles - one put in the car as one bag of bottles is returned to get them rid of them in small amounts.  Husband hates the entire process (see the comment about his family not recycling in the body of this post) and I had been saving them up to take monthly.  This has become a problem this year and I would not have a chance to do so again until September.  I plan to get rid of the bottles a small bag at a time.  Once we are caught up the same bag or less will be returned weekly.

THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK -

Sometimes when one never has time to do something, it suddenly becomes “oh carp, we have to do this NOW.”  If that happens do what needs to be done.  If you can prevent yourself from reaching that point - do it before it reaches that point.  Oh, and of course, the snow shovels still have not been put into the snow blower shed.






                               

HOW MANY THINGS CAN NEED TO BE REDONE?

I know I complain a lot.  Life used to be relatively organized.  I would do things and be done with them.  Lately everything seems to be awry.  I do things and they have to be redone.

One of the things I do in November is reserve the meeting room for the following year for my embroidery group.  This was relatively simple at first.  I would receive the paperwork in the mail early in November, fill it in, have my signature notarized and mail it back - and we had room - free - to meet in for another year. 

We had met in a series of churches over decades - back to before I joined the group in the 1990s.  (The group is around 40 years old.)  We would pay for our meeting room. The group used to be over 400 members.    The group would have workshops and interested members would pay for same which would allow the group to pay for a meeting room. Over the years members aged (with the inevitable result) and moved away.  Women were working and could not come to day meetings.  (A new group had broken off from ours and meets at night in the next county - some members belong to both groups.)  Interest in embroidery waned.  We were down to around 20 members.  I figured out (as treasurer) that in 3 years we no longer would have anything in the treasury and the group would be gone.  As I was about to sign the agreement for the next year, I noticed a mailer from the local township.  One of the parks caught my eye.  I called and asked about the use of a room for meetings.  We had just enough percentage of members who were residents of the township for a room - since we are non-profit - it would be free!  We were given space at a park other than the one I saw and we have been there for 5 years now.  The women who work in the park office have been very nice.  The first woman who ran it, however retired.  Since then it has been a bit confused in renewing the room.  Last year I did not get the form until late so I had made a note for November 1 to check with them.

October 31 I received a phone call asking for the group’s email address.  I called back and left it on voice mail.  A week later, nothing had come and I had not heard from anyone.  I called back in case my voice mail had gone astray and was given someone else’s voice mail and left the info again.  Another week - I called and was told that the forms would be out shortly. The next week was Thanksgiving.  I was telephoned the day before same by the woman who used to run the department who again asked for my email - I told her the story and she apologized.  She called back later to check which park we meet in.  Thank goodness it was all finally going to be done with!  On Tuesday the next week I received the paperwork by email.  I filled it in.  Wednesday I went to the bank and had the paperwork notarized and on Thursday mailed it back.  All done, finally, how great.

The following Tuesday I had a telephone message when we got home from errands, basically, sorry. another group meets in that room then.  Hmmm, we meet in that room then, maybe the nice former director had filled us in already on some chart or form?  I called her back the next morning.  No - another group was meeting at an overlapping time to ours - and she had a different location for us to met.  I questioned how this had happened.  The other group got their paperwork in first.  I told her the story of trying to get the paperwork and how unfair that someone else had, apparently gotten their paperwork earlier than us and taken our space.  I also explained that we were a group of “old ladies” - which we are, at 65 I am the youngest - and I was afraid that finding the other park would be too hard for them.  She hmmmed a bit.  Then said that since we only meet once a month and the other group meets more often maybe she could get them to give up the room for the once a month.  She did and we have the room back for next year.

Totally unrelated - and dealing with the county instead of the township - husband and I are entitled to a reduction in our real estate taxes due to our age and income.  I started collecting information for the paperwork in January - well I actually collected some during 2017.  I had to telephone our medical insurance companies for last year (which we had 4 of do to R switching to Medicare partway through the year) and get printouts of the premiums paid to them - listed by month paid.  Of course one only gave a total and I to keep after them for the correct info.  I also had to get listings of what we paid for prescriptions (Walmart pharmacy was the easiest of all the info needed for me to get) and the dentist and doctors from the providers themselves.  I did not bother with the doctors as payments to them were minor.  We have to get statements from who we paid - canceled checks are not accepted.

In late August I received the renewal papers from the county (we had gone through all this last year for the first time).  I filled them in and continued to chase down missing information.  While husband was incapacitated I finished the forms and started making the photocopies I needed to give them - photocopies of income, of the medical expenses, etc.  I wrote a summary of what I was giving them.  I wrote a cover letter.  We mailed it out certified mail (almost $7 postage) on November 27 - and received the information that it had been delivered and signed for on November 29.  We sat back to wait to hear from the county in April - maybe earlier if they wanted some other information.

Monday night we got a robocall from the county executive that we have not yet filled the renewal for our exemption! We panicked.  Tuesday I was taking my mom to her doctor and I called before I left for her house.  I got a voice mail setup and left my information and asked them to PLEASE call back and let me know if they were missing our application - knowing that they would not call back.  Oh, well, this was better than last year.  Last year when I called for information their telephone number was continually answered by voice mail that said, basically, we are too busy to answer the phone - goodby, although after calling for several weeks the message was changed by adding - that there is not enough parking here, so don’t come either.  While mom was in with her doctor I called again.  This time there was a message that people were called who should not have been called and - the message only applied to those over 65 and if one had receipt from them for the paperwork given, they were fine.  It offered a chance to talk to exemptions (overall I was calling the county tax assessor’s office) and I did so - same message as in the morning and I again asked to PLEASE let me know if they have our paperwork - just leave the message on our answering machine, they did not even have to talk to us.

Local news last night talked about the robocall error  - it showed the lines that people were on for 2 hours due to the call - as did the local paper today - 400,000 called instead of something liked 50,000!  But again it was said that as long as one had a receipt from them there was no problem.

Well, we only have the proof of delivery from the post office.  So being crazy people - we copied all the supporting paperwork, reprinted the forms and resigned everything and reassembled it all.  Tomorrow morning we will be going to the county assessor’s office.  Hopefully the crowds will no longer be there having heard on the news or read in the newspaper what the situation is and we will get in fairly quickly - perhaps even told that of course they have the application and paperwork.  But I anticipate a long wait to get in and who knows what has happened to our original paperwork.  Husband will drop me off and try to find a parking space - there are a lot of parking lots (free) but in addition to the county office buildings (at least 3 I know of) there are the courts (at least 2 buildings), general office buildings in the area and the train station which serves 2 train lines, so parking is not easy - which is why we mailed it in the first place.

Does this happen to everyone - or just us?

THOUGHT OF THE WEEK -

Always get a receipt.  Always follow up. Always make and keep copies (or give copies if you can and keep the originals).  Never assume that all is going well.  Do this for smaller things also, but especially for big important things.

UPDATE -

Even with all this going on, I managed to take more of my required tax courses and now have finished 14 of the required 20. I have a left a 6 hour (credits) course that has a 3 hour exam.  This exam is timed and has to be completed at one sitting, so I will have to set aside an evening alone in our office to take the exam - I do get 3 chances, but I have not yet (in past years) needed more than one attempt.