It's tax time again! And that means it's time to gather all our receipts and file our returns. Fortunately for me, I'm meticulous when it comes to my money, so I've been stashing away all of my receipts into a large manila envelope since the beginning of the year.

So I logged into my TurboTax account today and started filling in some information. Lucky for me, despite the fact that I'm working now, I spent part of 2011 in full-time studies so I qualified to use the free student edition of the Turbo Tax software. This version is particularly useful for me because I do some online securities trading and have some longer term investments, scholarships, etc. so my tax situation is not so straightforward. The free student version provides great support for this type of situation. There is one downside I've noticed however, and it's that getting support from the TurboTax folks is painful. Not only does their online chat support rep "Tina" not respond to questions (it's been two hours and counting since I submitted the question through the online chat system), but their customer service/support phone number is a 780 area code (long distance from Canada). Which as an aside, begs the question: since expenses incurred in preparing and filing your tax return are deductible, would the long distance charges be tax deductible too?

I'm a little bit peeved. It's my humble opinion that filing our taxes should not be painful, and should not cost more than the amount of your return. Since my return will only result in a credit to me of about $89 or so, it hardly seems worth the hours of torture I have already gone through and no doubt will continue to be subjected to until my return is complete.