Grr! I’m really pissed off at the people in payroll right now. Why? I’m glad you asked! See, because I work full-time at the university, I get tuition remission as one of my benefits (which means I don’t have to pay for my master’s degree). But at the graduate level, it’s taxable above a certain amount. Basically, come fall semester, they tell the IRS that instead of making, say, $1000 a week, I’m making, for example, $1500, and the IRS then takes out more taxes. Vell… with the amounts they were taking out, I quickly decided that I could only take three classes per year, which meant it was going to take me much longer than I’d expected to finish my degree (I went into it thinking I’d be able to take six classes per year – the maximum amount allowed under tuition remission).
Well as I was trying to figure out how much the tax amount would be this year (oh, because apart from everything else, they’ve totally messed up on taking it out both years I’ve done this, and instead of spreading it out over four months, have waited till the last two, so I still had no idea how much the amount was really supposed to be), the head of payroll very casually mentioned, “Well, you know, if you want, you can estimate the amount of the tuition remission and have the extra taxes spread out over the whole year.”
*blink* I- huh? I can?? Oh, this is nice! Thanks for waiting two and a half YEARS to tell me this!! If they’d told me from the start, I’d be finishing this year! *grumble mutter mumble*