Because I’m abroad, my taxes aren’t due on April 15—I get an automatic two-month extension until June 15, which is a week away. I just e-filed a few minutes ago, a full week before the deadline, which is the earliest I’ve ever done them!
Taxes are terribly exciting, I know, but I thought I’d share a tip for future volunteers (or the morbidly curious), and explain how this works.
I started my Peace Corps Service late in 2008, and I was working in LA prior to that. This means I needed to do my 2008 taxes just like I always do (using TurboTax), but I additionally received a W2 from the Peace Corps. They mailed it to my school here in Mombasa.
The only difference from the usual process is that I also needed to report the Peace Corps W2 ($150 dollars!). As far as the IRS is concerned, I”m not really a volunteer– I just have a very low-paying job.
So here’s the hot tip: Before you leave the US, TOAL ALL YOUR MOVING RECEIPTS. It’s deductable because it was due to a change in employers. I didn’t have any movers, just a U-Haul to NorCal, and even using the standard deduction I got a significant bump in my return.
Wow, what a boring blog post. I’m sorry… here’s something different: a picture of a Colgate box in English and Arabic. I’m always impressed with translated logos that look strikingly similar to the original English design. Arabic is especially hard because it’s read right-to-left and has its own alphabet, but somehow, when someone Arabic-illiterate (like me) reads the Arabic backwards (left-to-right) because of how it’s sitting on the store shelf, I can still tell it’s Colgate! (How did they pull off that “g”?!?!)
