Tax Time


Every year it's the same thing. 

 I hem and I haw. Suddenly the dishes seem very important and I have a book to write - right? Anything but do my taxes.

I know it isn't that big a deal. I use a program now - it does all the heavy lifting. I just need to organize my information and plug it in. Still, I put it off to the last moment. But that's okay, because I have most of the material I need waiting in a file. Right? Wrong!

This year, it seems I got a bit distracted and didn't put my T4s in their usual safe place. A half hour of hand-waving and cursing finally produced the missing documents. Whew! Time to celebrate by catching up on shows we missed during the week. I'd do my taxes after that.

I didn't have to worry about my invoice log. Not every bit of paperwork gets shunted aside. There was an expense log to bring up to date. No problem. Then I remembered that I had book sales to report and inventory. (Someday I'll have to get a proper accounting program - then I'll have something else to avoid.)

Finally I booted up the program and started filling in the information. I completely missed the instruction that would allow me to transfer and update the information from last year. Water under the bridge. I was a bit more frustrated when I realized that I forgot to gather the housing information for my Ontario Tax Credit. I had to pause the program while I dug it up on my laptop.

While I was there, I checked my mail, followed up on a few Tweets. This somehow led me to looking up Thomas "Doc" Durant, a railroad baron.

Once I got back to the taxes, there was only a bit left to do before I could play solitaire while the forms printed. No one would fault me for finished the game before going back to work.

So, it's now 3am and I've finally finished my taxes and just remembered all the other things I have to do. First on my list, sleep.