I spent most of my Sunday working on our taxes. Back when I was single and teaching high school, it was a relatively quick and painless task, but now that I’m married and we are working in two separate states, it has become a huge task. For example, Marta plays a lot of gigs with orchestras and almost all of them do not deduct taxes and issue 1099-MISC forms. This means that Marta has to be set up as a business and this adds multiple steps to the process. Furthermore, since Marta did not have income in North Carolina and I did not have income in Illinois, not only did I have to prepare a 1040 “Married Filing Jointly” I also had to prepare TWO more 1040’s “Married Filing Separately” in order to get the correct figures for the individual state returns! I hope that they are correct and don’t raise any audit flags, because I have this queasy feeling that I’ve made a mistake somewhere. Of course, I have that feeling every year.