Plaidophile

At the beginning of the year I got a letter from Amazon about how the rules for "Highly-Compensated Employees" changed regarding 401(k) withholdings, and that I may be subject to an additional mandatory rollover distribution, which would change my taxable income and so on. (I'm not sure how the mechanics of that would work seeing as how I have since converted my Amazon 401(k) into an IRA.) They said the audit would occur in February, and that I shouldn't do my taxes until I heard back.

I got a bit impatient about waiting, so I went ahead and emailed Amazon's 401(k) coordinator, and he pretty much immediately got back to me:

Thanks for checking in. I just sent out notices to HCEs who received refunds on Monday and HCEs not receiving refunds yesterday. For some reason your name didn't pull into yesterday's list.

You are not receiving a refund so you can go ahead and file your taxes.

That is good to know.

Meanwhile, I also never got my 1098 from my home equity loan, and they don't offer tax forms online, but a couple months ago I asked them when I'd be getting the 1098 and they went ahead and told me the interest amount. They didn't tell me their federal tax ID, though (I think they assumed it would eventually arrive), but fortunately I still have my 1098 from the previous year (tax documents are about the only thing I do keep pretty well-organized), so I have all that information too.

What tax software does everyone like these days? It must run on a Mac or be web-based, and the ability to prepare CA state taxes with a partial-year apportionment from a state with no income tax is vital (and in my experience, partial-year apportionments tend to be pretty finicky for states with more byzantine tax codes). Also, having the option to prepare a 1040X is pretty useful; last year I got burned a bit by using TaxCut and then discovering I'd forgotten to take a deduction on my Washington sales tax (which is deductible in lieu of a local income tax for some reason I'm not entirely clear on), and TaxCut would only allow me to prepare a 1040X if I went through their "licensed tax professionals," which would have cost more than the difference in refund. (Their "you got people" ads are a bit disingenuous, since they don't disclose the fact that for even a minor thing you're going to be out at least $150, and their idea of a minor people-required thing is certainly a much lower bar than could be trivially handled in software. Like adding a deduction to a 1040X.)