I don't.
But I do believe in obeying the law of the land unless it's unscriptural, so that means right now I'm going through files of receipts and ledgers.
Which brings me to the main purpose of this blog post...
Meet my wonderful mom
Doing taxes has taught me that I am dangerously undetailed... We're talking majorly, infinitely, unreservedly undetailed.
I just about gave my mom a heart attack when she asked after the meticulous sales receipts that took her two days to write last summer... "oh, that receipt book. I probably threw it out, why do we need a record of how many chickens we sold?..."
Then I proceeded to try and piece together my music earnings for the year... major fail. Um. Did you realize your online bank account only keeps a record of past deposits for about 6 months? I'm just sayin' you might want to keep that in the back of your mind.
Also, I guess keeping really accurate checking account records isn't enough, on top of that you've got to have a savings account record book... sheesh. Do these people realize it's okay to live and breath, eat and die in this world without writing it down in a ledger??? You have to keep record of gas mileage, separate ledgers for music and farm expenses/earnings, figure out whether that clothing item is a tax write-off because you wore it to such-and-such a function, use checks instead of cash to buy items where you don't get a receipt and so your deposit statement matches you monthly earnings record...
It's enough to drive one insane...
Here's kudos to my amazing mother. She sat down and personally went through all of my farm receipts, milk records, and charts, trying to make sense of it all. Whether or not she succeeded, I did learn to appreciate her attention to detail.
We're so different
which is kind of nice.
She is the most consistent homeschool teacher I know of. Obviously she has experience keeping tax records for my dad's business. She's also got the gift of mercy. God bless her, don't we all appreciate it.
I feel so good now that I'm figuring out how to keep self-employment records, though. My ledger is up to date for the start of 2011, and I'm being as be-a-utifully detailed as you could wish!
5 comments:
I hate taxes too... It all sounds horribly complex and confusing. Your mom is awesome. :)
As a self-employed person with multiple sources of income, I feel your pain! I'm also thinking of using a tax preparer this year because it seems that I always pay too much...who knows....
See Em, I told you ya NEED your Mom! :P
And I agree, your Mom is pretty awesome... taxes on the other hand, not so much.
Yep, no need to convince me further, my mom is awesome :P
Karen, both my mom and uncle have drilled it into my head that our job as self-employed people is to keep good records, and hire a trustworthy accountant to do the rest, since they are trained to know the tax code and can save you a lot of money. Sounds good to me!
Don't tell my dad your woes!
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