Fearless Money

This year my taxes were quite a bit more complex than they’d been before. With the business kicking off and all the tax issues about home-office, depreciations and the like, I just didn’t feel comfortable doing the taxes myself.

I chose one of the CPA firms recommended by my bookkeeper and just brought in everything I could think might be needed. Of course, I missed a few documents, but email and fax cleaned those up quickly. It was almost painless.

Waiting a couple weeks was painful, mostly because my rough calculations showed I’d owe at least a few thousand. Dustin had not filed the proper number of exemptions on her W-2 and so no money had been taken from her paycheck for a year. I’d made some decent money in the business, and paid no quarterlies. I hoped I wouldn’t have to use the tax-reserve I’d established for 2007 taxes.

But instead I got an email a couple weeks later, went in and paid a reasonable fee (just a few hours at my normal rate, really), and was incredibly pleased to discover that I had thousands coming to me. Wooo!

Seriously, if I had thousands coming, I am sure I would have gotten some back by doing it myself. But I wouldn’t have been certain, I would have spent more time in hours than I could’ve earned on projects, and I would have been angry/frustrated/stressed by the process. In contrast this was easy and if not fun, at least straightforward.

Here’s to not doing my taxes anymore. I am a convert.

Technorati Tags: taxes, accountant, cpa