A day to myself, mostly. How I do my taxes.

[mdlbear]

The flower_cat took the kids to the zoo today so I could work on the taxes (a chore that makes me even more ursine than usual). As a result I had the house to myself from late morning to late afternoon.

Of course, I did go out for my usual long walk in the afternoon, and spent some time reading, but I managed to get through the most essential parts of tax prep, and am ready to start data-entry.

My tax process, for the morbidly curious

I use the heap method of data management (it used to be called "shoebox" method, but the blasted stuff doesn't fit in a shoebox anymore) -- pile all the receipts and other correspondence into a heap, and sort it out at tax time.

1. Sorting(1): Sometimes I actually manage to sort things into file folders as they come in, but this year I didn't -- almost all the receipts were in a couple of big envelopes, unsorted, straight off the heap. So the first step is sorting. For tax purposes, the only really relevant categories are "tax" and "supporting documents", the latter being receipts and so on for items paid for by check.


2. Filing(1): Everything that isn't in "tax" or "supporting" gets tossed into a labeled, letter-sized envelope and piled into a box. "Tax" and "supporting" get put into manilla folders.


3. Data entry(1): is where I am now. All credit card receipts with tax consequences, my check register, and the Amex year-end summary get entered into a simple, flat, tab-separated text file. Things like dividend statements, bank statements, etc. don't need to be entered at this point; see the next step. This step takes several hours of mind-numbing tedium. I'll start tomorrow.


4. Tabulation: A trivial perl script is used to produce a simple report with sub-totals by category code. This report is basically the raw data for my Schedule C and some of Schedule A.


5. Sorting(2) All the pieces of paper that represent actual income have to be sorted by type.


6. Data entry(2): Everything gets entered into the tax software. I've always used TaxCut, mainly because it's what my father recommended. It consistently gets better reviews than the competition, and has the added advantage of not requiring an activation step that ties it to a particular CPU (as TurboTax does this year).


7. Finagling: At this point I decide what to leave out or move around so that my tiny "multimedia authoring and publishing" business (which covers such things as my songwriting and web sites) shows a profit every once in a while.


8. Printing: I always print file copies.


9. Filing: Because of several consecutive bad experiences with e-filing, I print 'em out and mail 'em in. Call me an old fogey, but I'm damned if I'm going to file another request for extension because I can't tell if the damned e-filing packet has been properly accepted.


10. Kids: It's not over until I file for any kids who file separately and have investment income. This year chaoswolf is old enough that she gets to do her own.


11. Filing(2): Forms, worksheets, and receipts all go into the file cabinet.


12. Backup: TaxCut's data files get uploaded to the fileserver and checked in to CVS. After doing the weekly backup, they are now on three different disk drives and can be considered reasonably safe.

You didn't want to know all that, of course. chaoswolf, you need to read it, whether you want to or not.