Taxes!

Since I'm in super-procrastination mode I actually started working on my taxes tonight. That's how bad the whole thesis thing is, just to give you a frame of reference. Once I get going, I actually find the tax thing mildly interesting. It's a little like boggle in a way. If you don't look very hard, you only find one or two words, but once you start really looking (or cheating) you can save yourself some serious dough. For example, my super-Studly Hubby is in school and paid a hefty sum for tuition last year. The tuition exemption (if he's eligible, we're still finding out) would cut us a $1000 tax break. Holy cow! And then, sometimes you get screwed in surprising ways - even interest earned from a savings account gets taxed. Doesn't that seem wrong somehow? And whether we're married or not, we don't save any money in taxes, but lose everything in the renter's return (oh $700, how I miss you - I make the same as I did two years ago but where did you go?).

The thing that really freaks me out is this: once we have kids, and all our parents come live with us, and we have three houses in the US and one in Greece (to get away from the kids and the parents) and a Swiss savings account, and some Hurricane Katrina victims come stay with us a while, then what in the world are our taxes going to look like? I think they're pretty crazy already and we don't even have anything going on yet.