Balk

balk
verb, intransitive. hesitate or be unwilling to accept an idea or undertaking
verb, transitive. thwart or hinder; prevent an individual from having something

She was ready to go online and file their taxes when the statement from the pipeline company arrived in the mail. She was enraged when she opened it and began to read. There it was again: the most incomprehensible tax form she had seen yet. Why couldn’t it be straightforward? She had marvelled all year at the large dividends the stock paid--reinvested in more of the same, by her order. After doing the previous year’s taxes, she had vowed to sell the stock so she wouldn’t have to wade through the form and its twelve pages of explanation again. So much trouble for so little gain. But she had balked at the sale when she saw how much it was earning.

This is what greed gets you, she chided herself as she looked at one page after another. This piece of mail meant she had to start the taxes over. It infuriated her: hours and hours of work--gone. Thank goodness she did the task electronically. If she still filed on paper, she would be regretting lost days.

Definitions adapted from The New Oxford American Dictionary, Oxford University Press, Inc., 2005 (eBook Edition, copyright 2008), and from Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam Company, Publishers, Springfield, Massachusetts, USA, 1965, depending on which is more convenient to hand.