by Melannie Gonzalez

Created on: April 15, 2008

When I was single tax time was actually a pretty awesome time for me. My biggest concern was whether or not I would get my w-2 by January 30th. I almost always get back most of what I had paid in for the year. I filled out a few lines on the 1040EZ and mailed my forms in no later than February 5th.

Then, I moved to the Dominican Republic to be a missionary. I forgot all about taxes for four years.

Then, I came back to the US.

Married.

Even married filing jointly wasn't so bad. My husband and I were both working full time, did not yet own a home, and were childless. Pretty straightforward.

Then, we decided to become self employed. The first year we barely scraped together enough income to be above the poverty line. Now that we were small business owners, we were advised to have our return "professionally prepared." The firm we chose actually had that word as part of its name. I made an appointment and met with "Pete", the owner of the establishment. He spent about 20 minutes with me and then had his secretary print out our returns. Due to the very small amount we actually made that year we only ended up paying about $1000.00. Much less than we had anticipated based on the things we had been told. We were thrilled. We thought, "Hey, it's not so bad. Wonder why people make such a big deal about this?"

The next year I put off making my appointment with our tax professional until April 1st. I was thinking that things would be about the same as the year before. In fact, I was proud that I had set aside $1500.00 in savings to cover our taxes. I felt that it was better safe than sorry. I can still remember the moment that "Mike", "Pete's" son, after furiously entering a series of calculations into his computer, pushed a piece of paper across his desk to me and said "This is what you owe."

$6000.00

My mouth felt as if it were full of sand. I tried to speak, but no sound came out. It was sort of like those dreams where you want to run away from the monster that is chasing you, but you're suddenly paralyzed. Mike squinted his eyes sympathetically and said "You weren't expecting that amount, huh?" I have no idea what I said. All I could think was "Where in the world will I get $4500.00 in two weeks?" I gathered my little payment vouchers and stumbled out to my car. I called my husband to share the bad news. I cried quite a bit that night. Thankfully, my sister had just received her tax refund and was happy to loan us the money. I thought "We need to have some kids so that we

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