Rant: My printer died mid tax filing and I nearly lost everything

Last Saturday, my 3 year old HP printer just stopped working at 11 PM while I was printing receipts for a $2,100 deduction I claimed. I ended up using my neighbor's scanner app on my phone to save the PDFs, but now I'm paranoid about keeping a backup plan for tax season. Has anyone else had a crucial tool break right when you needed it for filing?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_olivia15d ago

Three years ago my Brother laser printer died on April 14th at 10 PM while I was trying to print my return. I had to drive to a 24 hour FedEx Office and use their computer to print everything. Now I keep a cheap backup laser printer in my closet and scan all my receipts as PDFs throughout the year instead of waiting. Also, I learned the hard way to save every tax document in three places - my phone, a cloud drive, and a flash drive.

the_rowan15d ago

My buddy Mike had almost the exact same thing happen but with a different twist. He was at Kinko's at 11:30 PM on April 15th and his car battery died in the parking lot while he was inside printing. He had to call his brother in law at midnight for a jump start, and his brother in law showed up in pajama pants and slippers. Now Mike keeps a portable jump starter in his trunk and prints everything by October just to be safe. The whole thing turned into a family joke that gets brought up every single year around tax time.

robin89615d ago

Honestly I used to think backup plans were overkill but stories like this totally changed my mind.