Tax Day aftermath

I blogged earlier today about the extension for last-minute filers, due to the IRS system going down yesterday.  Apparently the site had a message on it during the outage saying it wouldn't be back up until December 31, 9999.  Wish I'd gotten to see that!

I ended up working on my taxes for about 14 hours straight overnight Monday into Tuesday, which is a good argument for being better about keeping my records up-to-date this year.  Updating the records, going through all of my old receipts, filing last year's taxes (I still hadn't!), and getting organized took most of that time.  Actually working on this year's tax returns probably only took about four hours, and a lot of that was rearranging my spreadsheet so that all of my expenses were listed under the correct categories.

So.  Next year.  Stay up on the reporting.

It actually didn't go that badly, despite the amount of time it took.  When all was said and done, I discovered I didn't owe anything, because as usual I had overpaid my estimated taxes, so I just funneled the remainder into my 2018 taxes (yet again).

Filing everything and clearing off my desk got me energized, though.  I haven't used my office in at least a year because it's been such a mess: My desk was covered with tax stuff that still had to be filed, and the rest of the space had become my storage space for projects, things I was selling, and just in general things I didn't have room for.  Monday night I had started cleaning it all up, and today I went through a couple boxes that had gotten relegated to the office, shelving books, setting aside things to give away or sell, and just in general doing some much-needed spring cleaning.

So all in all, Tax Day was a rousing success.  I didn't get any sleep until the next night -- a personal record for me, staying up not only over 24 hours but more like 34 -- but I did god work, got it done, and got myself moving on a project that has needed doing for a long time.

Perhaps because of the Tax Day system outage, I got my confirmation email much later than usual this year.  Last year it only took about 10 hours for the IRS to send me an email stating that my tax return had been accepted, but this year it was almost double that.  I tried staying awake until the email came through, but just didn't make it that long!

How did everyone else's Tax Day go?  Was anyone affected by the outage?