Time to Gloat
You could just hate people like Dorothy Arney at a time like this.
With so many others laboring under that annual pencil-snapping, hair-pulling, 1040-staring, post office-waiting brand of shared suffering called tax time, Arney has not only completed her tax returns--she’s already spending her refund.
And gloating.
For Arney there will be no eleventh-hour scramble for that essential extra tax form that is stocked, apparently, only in Burkina Faso, and no head-throbbing wait at the post office with the rest of the huddled masses. She knows she did something right.
“I feel relieved,” said the Culver City data-entry worker. “And also kind of superior.”
True, it’s easier to be punctual when there’s money waiting at the other end. The incentive for the 53-year-old Arney, who filed two weeks ago, was a $500 refund she was able to get in a matter of days by filing her return electronically. She has already used the money to buy books, pay some bills and treat herself to a dinner of chicken curry and white wine, with English trifle for dessert.
“It was a splurge,” Arney said.
Eddie Spielman bought himself a two-week vacation in Toronto after receiving his $3,500 refund in February. The rest went for bills and savings.
“I don’t like to wait till the last minute to do things,” said Spielman, a 28-year-old marketing representative who was kicking back at his home in the Hollywood Hills on Monday, the eve of the April 15 filing deadline.
“I don’t need that kind of stress.”
Promptness is not all that separates Spielman from many of his procrastinating countrymen and women. All year long, he keeps careful files--tracking expenses, business write-offs and the like--as if he knew they would make life easier come tax-filing season.
“The minute I get my W-2,” Spielman said, “I’m knocking on my tax person’s door.”
For Spielman, filing early is more than a bureaucratic strategy; it’s part of an approach to life that has a Zen-like ring. There are too many people in too big a hurry too much of the time, he said. It’s an easy way to miss the truly important things in life--say, an arcane deduction.
“I want to eliminate as much stress in my life as possible. At the same time, I want to make sure it is done as well as possible,” Spielman said.
Actually, the ranks of the virtuous are not as select as you might think. The Internal Revenue Service had received more than half of its expected 120 million returns by April 4--about two-thirds of them resulting in refunds. The final 36 million federal returns were expected in the last two weeks of the tax season.
Nearly half of California taxpayers had filed their state returns by April 10.
“If they’re getting refunds, they’re going to file before the April 15 deadline,” said IRS spokeswoman Jodi Patterson. “They want the money.”
Tax preparers say the early birds tend to be the ones with the simplest needs--wage earners without income from investments like stock sales or rental property.
Mark Coleman, owner of a Pasadena firm called Tax House, said those who show up for tax help at the last minute often do so because they have failed in earlier attempts to complete the returns--either because of complicated finances or simply lost paperwork.
“A simpler tax form is filed the first half of the season and the more difficult late in the season,” said Eileen Brown, who oversees 22 H & R Block offices in Los Angeles.
Brown said early filers enjoy several advantages. In unhurried conditions, they are less likely to overlook a deduction for which they may be eligible. There is more time left to have their employers adjust the amount that is withheld from paychecks for next year’s taxes. And there is no waiting in line on the final day.
“If time is money, it’s a waste of time trying to beat the deadline,” Brown said.
No one needs to tell that to Michelle Hiradate, who filed her returns Feb. 22 and has filed early since she began working three years ago. The $600 that Hiradate got back from Uncle Sam and the state this year made a dent in credit card bills.
Hiradate, a 23-year-old receptionist at a Gardena graphics firm, admits an advantage when it comes to such things.
“My uncle’s an accountant and he does it for free,” she said.
But even the early birds aren’t fully immune from the headaches of the last-day tax scramble.
Tomekia Hobbs filed her tax returns Jan. 22, getting back $1,800 in combined refunds from the federal and state governments. Yet there she was Monday, amid all those miserable last-minute filers in line at a post office near USC.
Hobbs had a 20-minute wait--to buy some packaging materials for a completely different purpose than taxes. However, it didn’t bother her as she recounted how she had taken to filing her returns early the past few years.
“Nobody else in my family files as early,” said Hobbs, who works for a shipping company. “They all hate me for doing it.”
(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)
Last-Minute Returns
Several post offices in Los Angeles County will be open until midnight Tuesday tonight to accommodate last-minute income tax filers. Most locations will have uniformed personnel outside to collect returns. Full window service will be offered as well. Taxpayers should have returns stamped and ready to mail because traffic is expected to be heavy and parking scarce. Post offices in the Los Angeles area that will be open Tuesday until midnight:
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Area Address * Downtown Los Angeles 900 N. Alameda St. * Airport area 5800 W. Century Blvd. * Marina del Rey 13031 Jefferson Blvd. * South-Central L.A. Florence and Central avenues * Pasadena 600 Lincoln Ave. * City of Industry 15421 Gale Ave. * Arcadia 41 Wheeler Ave. * Burbank 2140 N. Hollywood Way * Glendale 313 E. Broadway * Long Beach 300 Long Beach Blvd., 2300 Redondo Ave. * Van Nuys 15701 Sherman Way * Sherman Oaks 14900 Magnolia Blvd. * Encino 5805 White Oak Blvd. * Studio City 3950 Laurel Canyon Blvd. * Canoga Park 8201 Canoga Ave. * Woodland Hills 22121 Clarendon St. * Northridge 9534 Reseda Blvd. * Sylmar 13700 Foothill Blvd. * Lancaster 1008 West Ave. J-2
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