1 I finally did my taxes yesterday, and was pleasantly surprised to get nearly $5,000 back. That'll come in handy while I'm job-hunting. I'd expected to owe a little to the feds and get a little back from the state, like last year.

Unrelated, I just found the little box of mini onsen duckies I never mailed to you last year...

-j

2 We did ours months ago...we got $37 back and a lovely notice that we have to pay estimated taxes each quarter this year. Supposedly, the deadline for the first payment got moved back, but I didn't trust that announcement, so I went ahead and sent it in. You'll be surprised - nay, astonished - to know that the IRS cashed the check within a few days of its mailing.

3 Make sure that your deadline was moved for both federal and state taxes.  I know Oregon took about a week to come to the decision that they would also postpone the filing deadline.  
I always do my taxes pretty much as soon as I get all the required documents at the end of January, I got in that habit years ago when I was always getting large refunds.  Now that I've got it more balanced and I usually end up owing the fed a small amount and getting just a little bit more than that back from the state, I may start filing closer to the deadline, in case stuff like this happens.

4 David, Illinois has indeed postponed to July 15 as well... I spent a lot of time last night making sure both Fed and State were really delaying.  Whee!

5 By the way, if you don't qualify for Free File, but don't need all the "Advice" Turbotax gives you, there's also a Free E-Forms program at the IRS. The only thing it does is calculate the fields and you have to add whatever schedules you need from a list. Then you can file it for free, which beats paying the $74 they charged me last year for the equivalent of filling out a 1040EZ (Which no longer exists). Since the increased standard deduction finally outweighed my itemized ones.

6 Got mine done early (every year), and got $4 back. Nearly perfect.

Great shot of Matoi.

7 Mauser, I've used H&R Blockhead's free filing service for... a decade?  Around about that long, anyway.  Sadly, 2019 will be the last I qualify for the service... I'm aging out, like a member of an idol group.

8 I thought the limit on free file was just Income.

9 Nope, age is part of it as well.  If you are 52 during the year involved, you are no longer eligible to free-file.

10 Huh, I had never run across that. Then again, after I got my current job I eventually crossed the income threshold.

But the change in the standard deduction really threw things off last year.