I would like to let you know that if you ever sneak into my house while I am gone and, as any sitcom would have warned you was inevitable, I come back unexpectedly early, that you do not need to murder me in order to make good your escape. All you have to do is stay out of my way as I head directly and absolutely predictably for the bathroom. You don’t even need to hide: I will be so single-minded in my purpose, it is unlikely I would see you even if you were sitting comfortably in the living room, legs crossed, sipping from one of my coffee mugs. Right after I’ve closed the door, you can stroll out, unseen and unhurried.
I just spent twelve United States dollars, which is incidentally two dollars more than my highest ever hourly wage, just because I liked this bottle:
I’m not proud, but I am happy. Even the grocery store clerk commented what a pretty bottle it was. I have a shelf of useless things (decorative candle holders, empty whiskey box) all in this color range, and as soon as I drink whatever it is I just bought, the empty bottle is going to look PERFECT there. I told the clerk all about it. “Uh huh,” she said, possibly mentally comparing the price of the bottle against her own hourly wage.
I did my taxes yesterday and I’m so happy to have them done and also ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN that I will be audited for my clueless mistakes. Actually, what I am sure of is that every year the IRS finds multiple clueless mistakes, and chooses not to audit me because all the mistakes are against my own interest. Next year I am getting someone else to do this FOR SURE: I am NOT going to spend another year PLANNING to have someone else do it and then put it off and put it off and put it off and end up having to do it myself. Though I am discouraged to hear that even when someone else does your taxes, you still have to do multiple hours of work? Is that so? Because that’s what I am doing when I do my own taxes. I was picturing shoving the big envelope of paper onto someone else’s desk. But I guess there are a fair number of things that someone with a big envelope of paper still wouldn’t know needed to be taken into account. And, the nice thing is, after doing those several hours of work I could think that the taxes were done RIGHT. That would be a novel experience!
Start asking around for tax prep names now. Then make the call to see about getting added to their list so you’ll be ready for next year.
Can you please add a picture of the shelf to this post, pleeeeeease?
I spend maybe an hour making sure I have all the documents (checking against last year’s), adding sticky notes for what’s what (actually, reusing the same sticky notes from last year), totaling up my tax-deductible donations (maybe don’t have to do that next year?!? Ugh).
That bottle IS exceedingly pretty!
Favorite line: “as soon as I drink whatever it is I just bought, the empty bottle is going to look PERFECT”
I shove all my tax stuff into an envelope and mail it and a guy in Idaho files my taxes for me. It is the dream you have. When we went to H&R Block or whatever, we had to go with all the forms and sit there and do all the work along with them. The tax guy in Idaho charges more but also we’ve gotten way bigger refunds since we started using him so worth it. Plus, shove/envelope/done.
Starting Jan 1, I gather my tax information as it presents itself (in the mail, in my email box, etc) and compare it to the stuff I had last year. Then it goes in an envelope to my tax preparer. I drop it off and announce “NO rush on this!” and sometime over the next couple of weeks I get a call from him asking for any missing info or to come in to sign and submit. I had a great accountant, he passed away, then I did my own taxes for a couple of years and despised it (I know I gave the government free money). Spent some time finding a new accountant and I haven’t looked back since. Worth every penny.
Google images for “isle of harris gin”. I want one of these, and I don’t even drink! And I bet it would cost more than $12USD.
Not only is it a pretty bottle, it’s infused with sugar kelp. I don’t know what that is, but now I feel like I have to have it.
“Sugar” sounds good to me, but “kelp” makes me hesitate. I can’t imagine a seaweed-flavoured gin!
I started have someone else do my taxes when my husband and I bought a house. It was a great decision. My husband is the one on paperwork duty for this, but it’s about 30 minutes to double check that we have everything, fill out the questionnaire from the accountant and then get it mailed off. And we automatically get the paperwork in the mail the next year, we don’t have to call the accountant or anything. The first year we used the accountant there was a problem with how the mortgage company had submitted something to the IRS that made it look like our taxes were incorrect. The accounting people had me fax them that form and just took care of all of it, they filed new paperwork with the IRS, they called the mortgage company that had messed the things up, I did not have to do any follow up at all, it was amazing. It saved me days if not weeks of worry and hours of frustrating phone calls and hold music.
I basically do the shove/envelope thing, but I do pay a pretty penny for it. Still, though. Easy button.
This is totally NOT a useless thing though! First off, it comes containing alcohol, which is very useful and pleasing. And then you get to *extend its life* indefinitely by having it remain a pleasing object for you to have and see daily. This seems like an extremely GOOD use of $12 to me.
Granted, my current tax accountant is my husband’s father (remains one of the best perks of marrying him, and I am not even kidding about that) so he probably has to ask fewer questions than someone who didn’t know us at all, but we too just compile documents into a folder and shove them at him, sometimes answer a few one off questions, and then sign. Highly highly recommend and will absolutely pay whatever it costs to continue having this done for me when C’s dad no longer wants to. The only tedious work I do is trying to look up / compile all my charitable donations throughout the year. Every year I say i will start a spreadsheet and track them as I donate and I never, ever do, so I spend a dumb amount of time searching through email and paypal and bank statements trying to figure out all the various methods I used to donate where and when and to who knows what throughout the year.
Same. I try and remember to print off the Thank You from wherever I’ve just donated money, and I put them all in a folder in the basement. I hate having to try and track that stuff down. Though now that the tax laws have changed, we’re probably just getting the standard deduction rather than itemizing (or so my accountant tells me). I highly, highly recommend going the accountant way. It’s seriously worth every dollar (and it’s a lot of dollars for me), but it gets easier every year. It’s definitely not hours of work.
Every time I donate, I ask for an email copy of the receipt (easy, since all my donations are done online anyway). I have a folder in my email marked “taxes” and subfolders for each year, so I just shovel all tax-related emails there and have them all in one place when I sit down to do our taxes. Easy.
Thwarted surprise party murderers could use that same technique at my house.
Tell us how whatever it is in the bottle ends up tasting. My local grocery store just began stocking the same brand and I was about to buy a bottle for identical reasons when I stopped myself because maybe the bottle is the best part and if it is I will keep the bottle knowing I’d never buy THAT wine again but I truly don’t need another blue bottle in my life.
I feel like this is proof I’ve been around too long, but didn’t you have another post awhile back asking about getting a tax person and if it was worth it, etc? Bc I swear I commented on that one, but I will add that I just put any piece of mail that arrives to my house with “important tax info”! stamped on it into an envelope and take it to my person. I usually don’t even *open* the mail until I’m sitting in front of her. Then I rattle off any random concerns I might have (I did a backdoor conversion, is there a form for that in one of these envelopes??; here’s a list of books I bought and prices- is this tax deductible??). It’s all very unorganized and I let the tax person figure it out. I assume that’s part of what I’m paying for.
Does the USA have the equivalent of simpletax.ca? I’ve used them for years and it literally took me 20 min. Plus it’s free (or you can choose to donate $5 or $10). I think the first year probably took a bit longer, but otherwise they just autofill all the sections you used last year, you connect to your bank account and it auto deposits your refund, you connect it to your online CRA account and it auto-loads all your t4 info. Digital signature and you’re good to go.
For donations, I keep all my email receipts in one folder and used that to quickly find them all.
That bottle is delightful.
My husband does our taxes, and when I say my husband does our taxes, I mean that on approximately Christmas eve he starts obsessing over which tax forms we have received, when we will receive our tax forms, what he can surmise from my W-2, and filling things out in Turbotax, or similar software, and then he does not stop discussing them until they are filed, if then. It is, on the one hand, rather maddening, but I know, on the other hand, that I should be (and mostly I am) grateful that he manages this process. So no accountant for us.
I also would like to see a photo of the curated shelf of pretty things. I pay someone to do my taxes and it takes me two movies worth of time to get the information together. Watching movies makes it bearable.
So either my accountant is not up to snuff or we have WAY more complicated financial situation than most of you, but the way ours works is every year around the end of Jan she (accountant) sends us a tax organizer. We gather our documents and go through filling it in, then hand it (and all the documents) off to her. It took me HOURS b/c we have rental properties and sold one of them and just compiling all that info and sorting through it took forever. To be fair, there’s so much to compile that it would still take me forever just to find it all even if she filled it all in for us. BUT! Once it’s ready I just give it to her and don’t have to deal with any of the actual confusing tax forms and we always get a healthy refund back.
Also, the bottle is pretty but Moscato is way too sweet for me. But I do want you to report back on how it is!
My dad is an accountant, and his firm sends out tax organizers to all their clients. It helps cut down on missing documents/extra trips for you if you have a list to work off of.
To my mind, Moscato is a dessert wine better drink VERY cold and on ice on a hot day, so you might consider saving it until the warmer weather.
I do my own taxes, and I’m proud to say I am the only one of my siblings to do so (my Mom does the tax returns for all three of them still). I’m such a procrastinator, and this year will be worse, because my husband’s company has made a big mistake. They decided to send his state payroll taxes to Oregon for unknown reasons. We don’t live or work in Oregon. Now I need to file in Oregon, get those back and then send them to the state that we do live in.
We spent maybe an hour tops yelling across the house “WHERE DID YOU PUT THAT THING, YOU KNOW, FROM THE PLACE.” Then we toodled over to the CPAs office and handed him an envelope.
One week later (today), we got an envelope back that had all our taxes done, and we just need to sign something saying they can e-file federal and state, and then we need to mail off an envelope they addressed for us for local taxes.
IT IS THE BEST EVER AND I AM NEVER DOING MY TAXES AGAIN.
Also, my husband is self-employed and we bought a house and we had Marketplace health insurance AND SO ON so I don’t think our case was just exceptionally straightforward.