The Girl In The Band
  • Home
  • Who is the girl in the band?
  • My View From The Stage
  • Home Ideas
  • Career Tips
  • Fashion and Shopping
  • Just Life

YES I CAN!

2/9/2014

0 Comments

 
Picture
2014 has been really busy for me.   A week long business trip, lots of L.A. Lyon gigs, adding some new material to our repertoire and just the normal life stuff has not left a lot of time for anything else! My next major project will be that thing that most people hate more than Taylor Swift’s excited face.  Doing my taxes!

 Last year, knee deep in my financial ruin, and nothing in an extremely tight budget that said,  “TAX PREPARATION,” I was at a loss as to how these mysterious documents called tax returns were going to be filed.
 
I had never, in my entire adult life, done my own taxes. Even with simple income, I had always paid someone to take care of it. 
 
As the years went on and I acquired a small business called L.A. Lyon and properties with mortgages, it got more complicated. I finally ended up at an expensive accountant. I always got a fairly nice return, so although I was dishing out a good portion of it to someone who basically made me get everything ready and appeared to spend about thirty minutes doing actual work, I didn’t really think there was a better way. Besides, there must be some magic he was working to get me those great returns, right?  That’s why he was making the big bucks!
 
As my finances crumbled I took money out of my 401K to keep up with some bills.  Every financial article and advisor tells you never to do this and here is why.  When I sat down with my pricey accountant, he did his usual thing and suddenly, instead of a nice little chunk of change to pay him and try to keep my little financial Titanic floating one more year, he handed me a tax return that said I owed the IRS ten thousand dollars.  Suddenly paying him a huge fee made me want to throw up in the parking lot in front of his Mercedes Benz.
 
So last year, with no hope of any return going into my checking account, (still working on that ten thousand dollar debt) and no real budget for any hired help, I was contemplating how I would look in orange serving time for tax evasion. Explaining my dire situation to a friend, looking for sympathy, she
instead looked at me and said, “Why don’t you do them yourself?”
 
“Huh? I can’t do that. Mine are complicated.”
 
“Sure you can,” she said. “There are all kinds of programs out there.  Didn’t you have to get everything ready for your accountant any way? Receipts, interest, all that stuff?”
 
“Well, yes I did.”
 
“And then you went in his office and he asked you personal questions and filled in something on the computer?”
 
“Yeah.”
 
“And then the computer spit out your tax returns?”
 
“Well, yeah.”
 
“So buy some software, it's not very expensive, sit behind the computer and answer the questions yourself.”
 
Having nothing to lose, I gave it a shot. And guess what?  It wasn’t that hard! Plus, without 401 K withdrawals, I got a nice return to apply to my tax debt.  The same amount my fancy accountant had gotten me a couple of years before!
 
Taxes are not magic. Very few things in life are. We get it in our heads that there are only certain people on the earth who are blessed with a gift that we don’t have. How many times do we say every day, “I am not technical. I am not creative. I am not musical. I could never……”
 
 Not everyone has the same aptitude for everything, but everyone is born human and we are all capable of amazing things.  Taxes? Anything you really need or want 

 


0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Archives

    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.