There's one for you, nineteen for me

So it's official. My taxes are done and there's still a week to go before the deadline! I think maybe that's a first.

Not like my taxes are terribly complex or anything given that I am single, don't own a home, and don't have serious investment income. I mean, even after going through the pain-in-the-butt exercise of itemizing all my deductions, the standard deduction was still slightly higher (really, I thought I was pretty charitable last year, with all the donations and museum memberships and stuff, but apparently I'm either a horrible person or a horrible tax planner. Or perhaps both.).

I think my goal for this year is actually to make some big investments or something (how's that for a clear objective with attainable milestones...), just to complicate things enough so I can justify the expense of hiring somebody to do my taxes and related financial planning for me. Because honestly? Despite the relative ease of my current status, and even using straightforward tools like TurboTax, I'm pretty much at the limits of my ability to understand what I'm supposed to do. Seriously, when I clicked on a "see more information on this topic" link to see more information on this topic, this is what it returned:

Section 197 tax is the tax you pay if you elected to recognize the gain on the sale of a section 197 intangible, and to pay the tax on the gain at the highest rate. See the government instructions for more information.

Intangible indeed.

Tangentially, while making the necessary adjustments on my CA state return, I was asked if I'm eligible for "Ottoman Turkish Empire settlement payments." Unlike most of my tax-related ignorance, I'm actually curious what this relates to. And yet, exactly like all the rest of my tax-related ignorance, I just assume that if I don't understand it, it probably doesn't pertain to me...

And finally, I'd like to point out how ridiculous it is that I'm supposed to pay California "use" tax on anything I purchased outside of the state, online, or over the phone but didn't get charged CA sales tax. To quote the form:

If you purchase items from an out-of-state seller who did not collect California sales or use tax, you may owe California use tax on these purchases.
You may report the California use tax on your personal income tax return instead of having to file a use tax return with the California State Board of Equalization.

Do people really do this? I'm sort of assuming (hoping) that this only applies if, say, I bought my yacht in the Bahamas and now the state is expecting its 8.5% of $2.3 million, and not so much for all the miscellaneous Amazon.com books, iTunes songs, and such that I bought but for which I didn't keep records. And seriously? The Board of Equalization? Um, yikes.