Finding a new home

April has already come, and more than a month has passed since I am here. Time flies real­ly fast. In the first trips I had tourism, and now the usu­al every­day life. But I’m not com­plain­ing at all, I like everything.

It’s been a lit­tle cold here late­ly. In the morn­ing the tem­per­a­ture was 10 – 12 degrees, and in the after­noon 24 – 28, but now it’s hot again. On Sun­day, I swam in the pool with my grand­son. Every­thing is in bloom, the desert has turned bright yel­low because shrubs in the desert are most­ly yel­low. Many shrubs, like all cac­ti, fade very quick­ly. As soon as I am going to pho­to­graph some bush or tree, we come next time, and they have already fad­ed. Only mimosa and yel­low aca­cia bloom for a long time and many peo­ple sneeze from them.

About taxes.

In the Unit­ed States, all indi­vid­u­als must file a tax return by April 15. The dec­la­ra­tion is sub­mit­ted for the fam­i­ly or indi­vid­u­al­ly, depend­ing on how it ben­e­fits. Even chil­dren must declare income if they have income.

You can print the form in pdf for­mat, fill it out man­u­al­ly and send it by mail, or you can buy a com­mer­cial pro­gram, as my daugh­ter did, install it on a com­put­er, and tax num­ber you get the base of income and deduc­tions of your own and the whole fam­i­ly who made the enter­prise. Then, in the form of a dia­logue, you answer ques­tions, enter addi­tion­al infor­ma­tion about your expens­es and income. The pro­gram imme­di­ate­ly cal­cu­lates the tax that you are oblig­ed to pay in addi­tion or you are sup­posed to return some amount of tax. More­over, tax­es are cal­cu­lat­ed imme­di­ate­ly both fed­er­al and regional.

This year, her daugh­ter was work­ing part-time and had a lot of tuition fees, so the pro­gram showed her that they should pay a lit­tle extra Ari­zona tax, and a good amount of fed­er­al tax should be returned to them. Then, the tax file, right in the pro­gram, was sent to the tax office (here it is called the IRS), where the infor­ma­tion was checked, and two days lat­er they received an email noti­fi­ca­tion that their dec­la­ra­tion was approved. A few days lat­er the refund was cred­it­ed to their account.

I didn’t run any­where for infor­ma­tion and didn’t take them anywhere…

I didn’t run any­where for infor­ma­tion and didn’t take them any­where, how­ev­er, dur­ing the year they record all the infor­ma­tion that they might need. But such joy­ful events as a return do not always occur, for exam­ple, last year they had to pay extra tax­es, and this year the entire return went to pay off the loan amounts for their stud­ies. In gen­er­al, tax­es here are very high, max­i­mum fed­er­al tax is up to 40%, and with local tax it can go up to 50%.

Search for a new home.

This month, the con­tract for rent­ing an apart­ment in an apart­ment expires. Usu­al­ly the con­tract is con­clud­ed for a year and is renewed annu­al­ly, but this year the chil­dren decid­ed not to renew it, but to rent a house. The fact is that the grand­son’s school is mov­ing next year to anoth­er loca­tion (here, some pri­vate schools rent a place) and Levy will not have time to take him to school and to train­ing. There­fore, the chil­dren decid­ed to move clos­er to the school and spent almost a month look­ing for a suit­able home.

There are a lot of hous­es for rent, but it is very dif­fi­cult to choose a neigh­bor­hood that is good, the con­di­tion of the house is good and suit­able for the price, and is close to work and school. Usu­al­ly, Amer­i­cans don’t both­er, they pick up a house, but they go to a school that is clos­er to home, while in our coun­try a house is cho­sen clos­er to the school. Final­ly, with the help of a real­tor friend, we found a suit­able house, and after April 14 we will move. There is a lot of work to be done.