Some of you may have observed that I have been lying low these past few days and I’m sincerely sorry it has been so long since my last blog post. (Two weeks! Eek!) It’s just that it’s that time of year. You know, tax time. Usually I begin (and finish) the tax extravaganza earlier in the calendar year. However, this year there was some straggling paperwork for which I waited. For several days I have been spending a little time each day completing segments of sections of the forms-laden process.
How do you file your taxes, Alecia?, I hear you asking.
I’m a fan of TurboTax Home & Business software. (Intuit has in no way compensated me for this mention, FYI.) I’ve used it every year for the last several years. And since I have to do both personal taxes and business taxes, I’ve found this all-in-one application the most user-friendly. All forms are filed electronically and the interrogatory method employed to extricate information from the user makes the whole money-extraction process somewhat less painful, but certainly not pain-free.
Why don’t you hire someone to do them for you?, I feel you inquiring.
Overall, taxes aren’t difficult so long as one is organized throughout the year. Those who know me best might suggest I’m overly efficient and methodical in my bookkeeping. I think filing my taxes myself keeps me in touch with my income and expenses, and helps to make me a more responsible professional performer. It also reinforces my detail-oriented nature, and encourages me to pay close attention to periods and commas. Earlier in my tax-form-completion blowout, I seemed to be in quite a bit of debt to the state of Massachusetts:
In one little box I placed a comma instead of a period and it looked as though I earned more than $4M last year. Wow! Wouldn’t that have been great?! Unfortunately it’s not true. Even at that census commercial shoot there were only about $40,000 in motion picture money fluttering about. In no way did I earn so much last year and correcting that error took some poking about. How on earth would I have come up with $218,000?
Doesn’t it take a long time to file taxes?
No, not really. Completing the forms in small sections makes the time spent seem to pass quickly. All-in-all, I probably spent about 14 hours organizing paperwork, adding things up, creating some reports and following the TurboTax path. I learned from my dad the “brown bag in the closet” method of tax preparation, which involves placing every receipt and important sheet of paper into a bag in the closet throughout the year. Then, come Q1 of the next year, everything you might need is in one place. I’ve adapted this method to a more refined “decorative box”. (Shh! Don’t tell my dad.)
A few of the things I’ve learned include:
• always mark “0″ for the number of exemptions on my W-4 forms.
• make notes on receipts as reminders about the details of the funds spent and why.
• it never hurts to take a tax class for performers (or, in my case, musicians).
• ArtsTaxInfo can be a good resource.
• the “brown bag in the closet” method works!
• schedule small segments of time to do a bit of tax work here and there. Breaking up the process makes it less hairy.
There are 48 hours remaining until this year’s deadline. Make ‘em good hours, y’all! (Or, if need be, file an extension.)
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