trickery and taxes

I'm Feeling: massively hungry
Background Noise: California by Phantom Planet

I'll admit that I'm a bit of a tax snob - I never really saw why a regular person (that is, no home business or other weird things to file) couldn't prepare a tax return him or herself. I use TurboTax and it's proven to be fairly simple. So far, no IRS folks beating down our doors or anything. However, this year, I'm slightly baffled. In the past, we've gotten a decent amount back (the fact that my income was well below the poverty line for the years I was a student had a lot to do with that) - this year, unless I'm missing something major, our return is looking mighty small. (Please note that I'm not whining - I know it's great to get anything back at all - I'm just expressing my ignorance of the system).

Everyone told us that buying a house would be great for taxes - huge write-off, etc. I just don't understand how we're suddenly getting so much less back. If Mark were filing alone, he'd get a ton back - same for me. So why is that when we file together, our return suddenly shrinks?

It just always seemed like a nice reward for putting up with the pain of collecting tax documents and putting them all together myself that we got a fat little check at the end. This year, my anticipated reward is not so motivating.

Ok, enough about taxes - the sun is shining, it's 38 degrees, and it's almost lunchtime. Really, life can't get much better than it is right now! :)