Thursday, January 08, 2009

Get Your Tax Question Answered Free This Month [Taxes] . This year might have made you sick of hearing/thinking/worrying about money (just maybe?), but tax season still looms ahead. Luckily, one software maker is offering free answers to tax questions throughout January. Actual human experts affiliated with Intuit's TurboTax software and online services—which Gina previously threw into a faceoff against a human accountant—will call back anyone leaving a single question on the FreeTaxQuestion.com site, supposedly within 24 hours, with answers or at least guidance. TurboTax's callers will only answer questions on federal taxes, not state—specifically Forms 1040 (personal) and 1065, 1120, or 1120S (business). And there's a limit of one question callback per person for the offer period, which expires Jan. 31. Still, if you've got most of your taxes covered yourself this year, but have one niggling uncertainty, let TurboTax take a crack at it, and the most you'll have to endure is probably a semi-soft product push. Where do you turn for your single-serve tax questions, other than the big, big book of actual code? Tell us your go-to resource below. FreeTaxQuestion.com [TurboTax/Intuit via Consumer Reports Money blog] [Lifehacker] 11:09:04 AM     State Unemployment System Struggling. Even as people for the third straight day waited in line four or five hours to resolve unemployment issues, officials Wednesday scrambled to prop up the backlogged state unemployment insurance system. They announced mandatory overtime, diverted additional staff to call centers and suspended alternate work schedules, all to ensure maximum staffing at peak demand times. That's in addition to earlier word of 90 workers to be hired by February and efforts to add another computer server. Gov. Jennifer Granholm is "very concerned" and directing that resources be made available to ease the crunch, spokeswoman Megan Brown said. For the full article, see Ben Beversluis, "Michigan promises to fix unemployment system delays, backlog", Grand Rapids Press via MLive, January 7, 2009. [Red Tape Blog] 11:08:43 AM     11:01:50 AM

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