The IRS Man Goeth

Despite being confused, intimidated, and totally clueless, I sat down (okay, flung myself across my bed with my laptop) to do my taxes last night.

I discovered that, like a lot of financial tasks that come bundled with scary baggage, it's actually not all that hard. The only way in which my parents claiming me as a dependent affected the return is that it made me automatically ineligible for the Earned Income Credit (for which I believe I am ineligible anyway) and meant that I couldn't claim education expenses (which I couldn't have done anyway: my parents paid them). As HC very helpfully commented, I still qualified for the standard deduction on the basis of earned income. There were some complications because I spent half the year as a student (in a place that's not here) and half the year (less, actually) as a full-time employee, but the complications only involved frustration, not financial ruin.

The bottom line is that I filed for free without having to do any math and now I get money back (kind of a lot, actually: $701, total). And it's done. And I'm relieved. The real bottom line is that I, like, I think, many others, build things up in my head to be harder and scarier than they are, and just doing them often reveals that they are no big deal.