Late yesterday evening, my mom called. Bad news. The much-loved and well-respected choir director/assistant minister at their church (I know him slightly from having met him when I was up visiting) had a massive heart attack. He is in the hospital and they were able to restart his heart but have him heavily sedated and under one of those chilling blankets (apparently, lowering a person's core temperature somehow limits damage to other organs? I am not familiar with this). They don't know if he's going to make it.
I've been praying pretty steadily since I heard. He's a very nice man, he has three grown daughters, including one who kind of came "back to the nest" last year. I hope he makes it, and doesn't have any other serious damage. If he does make it, he will still need some pretty serious surgery.
Apparently he had no real warning signs before the heart attack - no prior issues, no bouts of chest pain. That's the scary thing. (Then again: if I have to die before my time, I'd rather it be from a quick deadly thing like a heart attack where I wind up standing outside the Pearly Gates going "Wait....what?" before I have a chance to realize what's happened)
His first name is Michael. I don't know how he'd feel about his full name being shared but I tend to believe God knows who we're praying for, even if we don't give the full name.
****
Then, this morning, the lesser thing, and the thing that's been resolved for now: I went and got my mail, and in it was a letter from the Oklahoma Tax Commission. They did an "adjustment" on my taxes for this year.
At first, reading it in the car, I had a glimmer of hope: wait, are they telling me I overpaid? That they owe ME money? But I went home, found my copies of my returns (and ugh, had to call on St. Anthony for that, I didn't remember where I had put them. Turned out the bag they were in was in my car - not a good move on my part, they sat in there the whole time I was gone and my car was at the train station. Good thing my car wasn't broken into). Anyway, yeah, I forgot to fill in a couple boxes but my calculations were solid. After looking at the return again, I couldn't figure out what they were saying: it looked like I was square with the state and no one owed anyone anything. (Okay, so that's not the "best" case scenario but not the worst one either).
So I called OTC. Waited on hold for quite a while. At least the person I got was pleasant. After talking with her, first she said I owed the amount listed (plus penalty and interest, OF COURSE). I asked her how that could be - I knew how much I had had withheld, I knew how much I wrote my check for, and it looked like they together accounted for what was calculated as the tax I owed for 2012.
Then she said: But you never sent a check.
Oh for the love of Pete.
I know I sent a check. I KNOW I did. I am not that absent-minded. I remember putting the dang check in the envelope, I remember the amount to the dollar.
And I said: wait, did the check not come through? I know I sent a check.
And she said: Didn't it clear yet?
And I thought: Of course it did. Because of the crazy 10-day hold rule on large checks, I got an overdraft charge on my account and money sucked out of my savings, because of the state and federal checks being cashed on the same day. (I had to get money from another source to cover the cost of my tax bill. It's complicated. Having stock investments might be a nice cushion against major emergencies but they do tend to complicate things taxwise)
But I said: Let me get my checkbook, I mark in there when checks clear when I balance the thing. And I did. And it had cleared.
A few more rounds and it turned out that someone at the OTC had forgotten or failed to credit the withholding from my W-2; that accounted for what they saw as an underage in my payment.
I know exactly what image goes here:
(Image from Darth Biomech on Deviant Art)
So, she said, "Oh, let's clear that up. I will apply your W-2 withholding and the balance zeroes out."
And I asked her three times: So I don't owe anything?
No, I don't owe anything. So it's resolved, and I suppose I'll get another letter in a week or so noting that (I'll have to remember not to freak out when the OTC envelope shows up). But, gah. Forgetting to apply withholding? If I had just gotten scared, or hadn't kept a copy of my return, or if I had believed them and not trusted my own math, I might have sent a check and NO ONE WOULD HAVE BEEN THE WISER.
If bad stuff happens in threes, like people say, I'm bracing for the third thing....
1 comment:
Poor Michael. That's how my Dad died, first symptom of heart disease was a sudden immediate fatal heart attack. He was almost 73 but I honestly thought he'd live forever.
And he left me our tax practice so the better part of my days are spent holding for tax authorities but not applying W-2 wages? That's a new one. Surely they file payroll more than annually.
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