April 6, 2004 - A Taxing Task

I was worried that I might not be able to pay my taxes and would have to do something pathetic like call up my dad and see if he could float me a little cash. This would have been even more humiliating, given the fact that I'd already taken out a small loan from a financial company for the purpose of paying my taxes.

As luck would have it, the final total wasn't nearly as painful as I'd anticipated. In part, this was because I've been paying off my student loans, and I get to subtract the interest paid from my net income. Whoever thought that student loans would have a bright side?

Of course, I also had to sit down and figure out how much to send in estimated taxes for the first quarter of this year. While I wasn't able to pay as much on that as I would have liked, I figure I can beef up those payments as the year progresses.

The hardest thing about being self-employed is having the discipline to set aside a quarter of your salary each week. It's much easier when our employer does it for you through withholding and you can just pretend you never had that money.

I have to start behaving myself if I want to avoid all this nastiness next year. This involves being sensible about expenses, like canceling my subscriptions to Shape, Popular Photography and Rolling Stone, great magazines which I must admit I never get a chance to read. But I'm still holding onto my subscriptions to Bust, Entertainment Weekly and The Fortean Times. I can't be entirely cut off from the world.

And, of course, there is my favorite cost saver: the consignment store.

Every year in April or May, my dad comes to Philadelphia for a medical convention, since he's a doctor. As part of that convention, there's always a formal dinner where the men are supposed to wear suits or tuxes and women to wear semiformal or formal gowns.

I knew I didn't have anything to wear in my closet, because the dress I wore last year was already getting big on me at the time. So when The Gryphon and I went to the consignment store this past weekend (my idea, natch), I headed straight to the formal rack to see what I could find.

I managed to find a very simple, elegant dress in my color: purple. It's sleeveless, floor length, with a matching wrap. The cost: $7. That's a heck of a bargain! And it looked good on me. In fact, one of the fellow clothes shoppers walked by and complimented me while I was looking at it in the full-length mirror.

Although the dress is just a tad tight, I figure that if I'm really good this month, it should fit perfectly by the time it's time to wear it. And if not, I could wear it as is.

I was going to have it dry cleaned but then decided, since it didn't have any stains, that I would dry clean it in the dryer at home. That freshened it up nicely. Now I have it hung in my living room as a reminder of why I need to be careful about snacking this month.

The Gryphon came over last night and amused himself playing an adventure game on his laptop while I finished up my taxes. When I'd finished, having triumphantly licked the last envelope, he asked me why I don't use tax software. I asked him what the advantage would be.

"Well, you wouldn't have to bother with all those forms." Plus, he pointed out, I could write it off as a business expense.

Is it completely deranged to admit I actually like filling out forms? It's the writing out checks part that I hate.

Now that my taxes are paid, I have a better idea of where I stand financially. I can consider completely my reorganization project, which I put on hold when I determined I needed to keep discretionary spending to a minimum until I had my taxes covered. My next goal is to get a new computer desk and, perhaps, some more shelves or organizers to manage the chaos that is my corner office.

Unfortunately, despite the fact that I do all my work from home and use utilities in the process, according to the tax code I can't put any of that down as a business expense. My office space is not a completely separate area from my living space. While I could argue that most of the time I'm at my computer it's for business, there's a shady enough area that I can't justify writing off a portion of my power bill, for instance.

It's almost ridiculous how good it feels to know my checks on their way. I almost feel silly now that I didn't sit down and do this earlier. I guess it's a life lesson to be learned: you can put off an unpleasant task as long as you want, but as long as you do you're faced with the looming specter of an unpleasant task to do.

Moral:
The sooner you do your taxes the better.