I don’t know how it goes in your family, but over here, tax season is absolutely no fun for a couple of reasons.
First of all… April is my birthday month and that’s a good thing. What complicates this, is owning a business and ALL the prep needed to be done to be ready to file our taxes.
So… are you following my line of thinking?
I don’t want ANY mixing of the two— my birthday and preparing for taxes.
Every year, starting in January, I begin hinting to Ed that it would be nice to have our taxes completely done before my birthday. Last year he met with our tax lady ON my birthday and then we went out to dinner.
Technically he had them done before my birthday celebration, but NOT exactly what I had in mind.
This year I decided to be extra clear, and again, starting in January I said, “Do you think it would be possible to have our taxes done before my birthday… as in… EVERYTHING organized, handled, done-deal, no meetings-still-to-happen?”
In other words, I was asking for a tax-free birthday.
Eddie assured me this could easily happen.
Well… January, February and half of March came and went with no activity in the tax department. I could feel my tax-free-birthday-wish being encroached upon, so I began probing (slight possibility Ed would use the word ‘nagging’- which would be completely inaccurate) as to the plan for getting our taxes done. He explained he would work on them the last week of March and meet with our tax lady on the 31st.
Tax prep makes for a long, miserable week.
Ed handles all the business paperwork and I do the personal stuff. Translation: He spends about 30 hours working on it and I spend… well… ummmm…. probably 2… at the most.
At the March 31st meeting, Ed was told he was the tenth person out of 200 clients, to come in and meet with her. He took that as high praise for how incredibly early he was in getting his taxes done.
Not exactly helping my “tax-free birthday” cause!
A few days later was my birthday and… let’s just say it wasn’t entirely tax-free. Eddie called 4 or 5 times with tax questions for Jessica AND we had to drop off more papers to our tax lady on our way to dinner.
Oh well.
I tried!
I’m just so incredibly grateful to be married to a hard-working, super-caring, over-the-top thoughtful guy!
Even taxes can’t change my mind about that!
Ed just informed me that this year we have until the 18th to file because of the weekend and Easter.
Who knew? He really WAS way ahead! Hah!
How about you? Are you ready for April 18th? How early do you get your taxes done?
Disclaimer: Any and all answers could potentially be used next January as I start the tax-free birthday persuasion talks yet again!
