Taxes are taxing

Today I took time out of my otherwise crammed schedule to do that thing that comes every year.  Yep, time to talk to the government and determine who overpaid whom and who will get a check them or me.

So yea, home offices.  Seems obvious, every e-teacher has one in some way shape or form. Phones, internet and a portion of utilities too make sense.

But here's a few things I didn't think about and now have to go find records for:

• For brick and mortar meetings.  I kept mileage and gas receipts, but I didn't realize I also needed my car interest payments, and car insurance for the year because apparently a percentage of those can be added based on the mileage.
• Cell phone breakdown-while somehow crazy to me instead of just knowing my business cell phone bill amount, there is a difference in where you put down cell phone data usage and cell phone phone charges.
• Last year's depreciated assets.  Whenever possible I tend to 179 the suckers just so I don't have to keep track of what was done when.  I prefer the straightforward version-I paid for it this year therefore my taxes should be dealt with this year.  But the pesky government likes to sneak in things like computers under a no 179 rule, so I have to remember them.  Thank god for last year's records.
• BTW-the govt now claims you only need to keep these suckers for 3 years, but if an item is forces to be depreciated over 5 years, how does that work?

I'm really glad I only have to do this once a year.