Taxes
Just finished doing the Taxes for 2005. It seems like I will be getting couple of thousand dollars back from the IRS which makes sense because I only worked for little under 4 months last year. By first experience with taxes in US was relatively painless - I received the W2 form (as opposed to T4 in Canada) from Altera and 1099-INT from Emigrant Direct and I went to TaxAct.com.
After following their question/answer interface, I downloaded couple of PDF files, put in my credit card number (for the California tax filing - federal one is free through IRS’ FreeFile program) and finally click the Submit button.
Everything seemed to be online and completely automated. It said I will be getting an email within 24 hours when my return gets transmitted to IRS and to the California tax authorities, and between 3 and 5 days until I get the confirmation from the respective agencies that my return has been accepted (or