Guess who’s working on income tax? It’s a big project, and, truth be told, not my favorite activity. But I figure it’s a good yearly test of how well I’m doing in emotional management. Every year I practice, as best I can, enjoying doing taxes.
The secret of happiness is to ask yourself every day
- What’s good about my life?
- What needs to be done?
- How can I get this done and enjoy the process?
So what’s good about my life?
(1) For starters, we have enough income to have to deal with taxes. We not only have a roof over our head and plenty to eat, we also have disposable income.
(2) My husband and I work well as a team. When we get tired and confused we don’t snip at one another. He takes that for granted, but I know too many couples that fight when they’re frustrated. I appreciate how lucky I am.
(3) When I find we need more information or forms I can go on the internet and get it. That’s a real boon. If I’m in the midst of trying to figure something out I love being able to tackle the problem right away and not have wait for more information.
What needs to be done?
Figure out a way to enjoy doing taxes.
How?
I love solving problems and doing puzzles. So why didn’t doing income tax feel that way? Because I thought I had to sit down to do it. I don’t like to sit, and I hate searching through a big pile of papers looking for what I need. I also hate having to keep switching between pages in the manual to fill out different worksheets.
Analyzing what was bothering me was a big help. I no longer sit at a desk to do the taxes. I first spread the forms out on the bed in relevant piles and I kneel so I have easy access to everything I need. I’m a visual learner and it’s much easier for me when I can visualize where things are. And I no longer have to flip through manuals for worksheets. When necessary I copy them ahead of time… again I have them right before me so I can see them. When it’s time to do calculations I put my numbers into an Excel worksheet so any number I need is right before me, not on some other page. I have a fairly good visual memory so mostly I don’t even have to label the cells. Excel makes calculations trivial, and if I need to add or change numbers the calculations automatically update.
Why not just use tax preparation software? We do that too. My husband uses TurboTax and has the patience to go through all of the questions and type in all of the information. It’s not foolproof either… in our case it’s too easy to misinterpret some of the questions. We guessed wrong one night and spent an hour or so trying to figure out how to get the numbers out of the wrong spot and into the correct one. We would never trust it if we didn’t understand what we were doing.
On the other hand, we figure if we each do our taxes in a different way we probably won’t make the same mistakes. It’s reassuring to do a rough draft as a puzzle, then compare our answers, see what needs to be changed and easily make the changes. It means there’s no pressure going through the steps. When we compare notes afterward it’s easy to fine tune the solution.
Why don’t we hire someone to do it for us? We’ve gone to a couple of local CPAs for other matters and they knew even less than we did. So we will continue doing our taxes ourselves and hopefully learn a few things… if nothing else, we can learn to enjoy the process.
What about you? Do you have any challenges in your life to keep you learning and growing?
OMG! I couldn’t do complicated income tax. My husband uses TurboTax & I do the dishes.
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bikehikebabe,
That works too! Kaitlin and Torben pay to get theirs done. It’s a good choice for them because they’re busy and hate doing it.
Evan,
That is definitely a challenge. There’s nothing like working with computers to keep us busy solving problems.
Praise where it’s due, Jean.
However, does anyone (apart from me) ever spare a thought for those poor beggars/buggers who have to devise system and its attending forms in the first place? And what of those wage slaves to then have pleasure to regurgitate and approve the most boring of all – other people’s expenditure and income? DOWN TO THE LAST PENNY. I feel sorry for people who have to face the petty day after day after day – only to fill in their own income tax form at the end of it all. It’s one of my pet hate subjects: How we create inane jobs when people should work the soil instead and put their pound’s worth of potatoes, onions and any spare broad beans going into the communal pot. Instead of which we push pennies. To put to GOOD use. Whatever.
U
well I don’t personally have this problem at the moment so I thought I would see if I could find an article about tax collection/stuff in NZ – we are also at that time of the year and I just happened to see this journalist’s take on things into todays Herald…
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/personal-finance/news/article.cfm?c_id=12&objectid=10716491
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/personal-finance/news/article.cfm?c_id=12&objectid=10716491
hope this doesn’t slot in twice – wrote a little missive to go with it as well. I don’t personally need to do tax stuff because of my circumstances
I give all the documents to my accountant and he does it for me for a fee. This has been going on for decades when I was traveling and could not be in India during the return submission time. Now that you have thrown the challenge, and since I solve crossword puzzles, I intend trying to file the return on my own, but would still get the accountant to do his bit as I do not want to break the association.
rummuser,
Have fun with it! I agree with your keeping your accountant, not just for the relationship but because then you have all the time in the world. And you can do as much or as little as you like. You have enough going on in your life that you need more fun, not more pressure.
Ursula,
I’m afraid if we all went back to the soil there would be a lot fewer humans on the planet. No doubt other species would benefit, but it’s not likely to happen soon.
Cathy,
For some reason WordPress put you in the spam folder. I’m sorry about the delay…don’t know what it thought it was doing. Maybe it thought you were a new commenter because you didn’t link to your site?
That was nice of you to provide the link. It’s always interesting to see what other countries do.