<p>I keep meaning to get started, but somehow end up back on College confidential! Someone give me a (virtual) swift kick in the *** and tell me to get on with it already! Anyone else dreading this venture?</p>
<p>neener
I don’t have to fill out the FAFSA this year- but I should get started on my taxes
what I do
is set a timer- actually an egg timer that I can see ticking for say 15 min
you can do anything for 15 min</p>
<p>groan. Mac house here. FAFSA supports many, many, many versions of browsers for PCs, only 1 for Macs… an outdated version of netscape. You’d think they would at least support a more current version of the program! Us Mac users get no respect!</p>
<p>I have been using Safari to access it…</p>
<p>I use safari and firefox- one of those should work</p>
<p>I’ve got to start working on taxes so I can do the FAFSA & Profile. I don’t bother with the estimated…just do the real numbers the first time. Fortunately, the renewal has a later deadline than the first-time. I hate it, I hate it, I hate it. I’d rather go to the dentist. Unfortunately, I have to do that in two weeks, too.</p>
<p>So do I!!! I am determined to get going first thing tomorrow…</p>
<p>I’ll be done with FAFSA, Profile, college specific forms and taxes by Monday. My procrastinating days are almost over… til next time.</p>
<p>TheDad,</p>
<p>Ditto!!! (Except I did get the dentist over with a month ago!)</p>
<p>Safari worked fine last year.</p>
<p>TD, when is your FAFSA due? DS’s was due by mid-Feb. so of course we had to use estimates. It seems like kind of a waste of effort to me, but I’m just going with the flow.</p>
<p>My husband PROMISES he’ll get the taxes, fafsa and profile done this weekend. But first, a little nap and there was that basketball game and…</p>
<p>SJMom, D’s school’s deadlines are:</p>
<p>March 1, FAFSA</p>
<p>April 1, Profile</p>
<p>May 15, Tax returns and anything else</p>
<p>But of course, I need to have a pretty good cut on the taxes done to be able to fill out the FAFSA accurately. </p>
<p>I, too, feel that doing the estimated forms is a pointless headache but I guess it gives them <em>some</em> ballpark. Perhaps I’m jaundiced…it’s probably straightforward for families whose income is all/mostly on W-2’s.</p>
<p>It doesn’t help that the college is finicky about Schedule C returns, causing me to have to carefully consider how to write off some expenses that <em>could</em> be in one category or another, trying to mindread what expenses they will add back into my income; e.g., they add back in 100 percent of my home office deduction, which frosts me, because I have a lead-pipe cinch case for the deduction itself. Even sent photos that demonstrated in passing the degree of clutter in my office. Did this help? Not a whit.</p>
<p><a href=“MarketWatch: Stock Market News - Financial News - MarketWatch”>MarketWatch: Stock Market News - Financial News - MarketWatch;
<p>“It turns out that I’m not alone in my sticker shock. As a full-time freelance writer, I’m among the one in 11 American workers who is self-employed, and most private colleges and universities have a built-in bias against the self-employed when it comes to evaluating financial need. How so? They routinely disallow some of the most basic deductions we take for the expenses of conducting a small business things like meals and entertainment, travel and depreciation. For the self-employed, these are a cost of doing business no different from a corporation’s spending on raw materials or advertising, but America’s private colleges add them back to income when they calculate the resources a family has available to pay for college”</p>
<p>DONE! YEAH! Taxes are done, (we just have simple w-2’s, nothing fancy), FAFSA done, and Profile done, Tax forms photocopied, signed and ready to ship off to college. (And yes, I ended up using Safari to fill out the form, even though it is not on the “supported” browser list. It worked fine.) Now for fun, I think I’ll have a root canal! :)</p>
<p>Don’t go too wild with the root canal anxiousmom! We don’t want this to be too much fun for you…</p>
<p>Xiggi, thank you so much for the link to that article. I had been feeling annoyed at one college’s request that I provide more detailed information as to the breakdown of Schedule C expenses- but now I see that it can help me to provide more detail. </p>
<p>I also see how it can make a difference how certain expenses are allocated. I was just working on getting my paperwork ready for my accountant. Its also useful to have for future planning… including for how we freelancers go about setting our fees and our policies for client payment of expenses. If the colleges are going to add back in our deductions, we might be better off asking our clients to pay directly for expenses (like airfare and hotel), rather than reimbursing us after we have paid. (The bottom line is the same for IRS, but obviously not the same for the colleges). This could be a big issue for consultants whose jobs require a lot of traveling.</p>