How to do my taxes
How I did it: I asked my boss and my Outlook calendar at work to find out how many days I was absent from work.
I finally copied and printed all the documents that were needed, installed ELSTER and crammed the numbers in.
Finding out which official document was the valid one (I had a huge pile of them, partially revoking each other) was a dreary task. I finally figured it out by ordering them by date and cramming the numbers into OpenOffice Calc.
Lessons & tips: Track your absent-from-work days neatly. I fail to do this every year.
Have an orderly way of storing your documents so you find the necessary ones easily. I'm not so good at this, too.
Resources: In Germany, ELSTER. It's free, but you get only minimal advice and the interface is quite unclear.
Sadly it's available for Windows only. I tried it under WINE and it mostly worked. But I had to boot my windows machine for the cover letter.
So, if you have larger taxes to do, perhaps it pays off to find a more comfortable software for it. I'm still waiting for usable tax software for Linux.
OpenOffice Calc (or Excel) is indispensable! I don't know how I'd keep an overview of all the numbers and documents without it.
Finally, my loyal old scanner and printer saved me the way to the copy shop. I ordered a supply of ink immediately after it :)
