Wednesday, August 23, 2006

I hate tax time, I love tax time.

Oh yeah. That time of year again.
See, you put it off for as long as you can, cause you just hate, absolutely hate putting all that paperwork together but then when the nice check arrives, you wonder why the hell you didn't do your taxes sooner cause you sure could have used that money.

But here's the thing.
When you work at one place, it's ok. You basically have one paper to find, what we call here a group certificate, whatever that means.
You get it by mail, you hold onto it, you take it to the tax guy.
Finito.

But when you are a freelancer with 18 different employers in a year, and a private business cause you are a film techician, and have loads of personnal expenses for your work, things get so complicated for a first timer like myself, it makes you want to stick your head in the oven.

Where are the group certificates from the people who employed me?
Where are all the accounts that I sent to people who hired me?
Was this film job on Pay-As-You-Go or did I put it under my ABN?(Australian Business Number...) Can I deduct this? Where did I put the receipt for this other thing?
And so on and so forth.

So here I am. Drowning in my sea of papers.

Oh, and moving house did not help either.(Hon, where did we put that box with the papers in it? No, the one with the enveloppes. And the accordeon file??........*sigh*)

So there. I bought a filing cabinet to never have to look for &?%$&?*& papers again.
I am identifying everything. Every little last thing, and I will have access to everything super easily, so flying-disappearing papers won't come and haunt me next financial year. And by then, I will have understood how Australian tax return works.

But for now, I am in my sea of papers, sitting on the floor of my would-be office if a tornado hadn't passed through.
I am not posting a picture. It's too sad.
I can see my mom shaking her head.

I hate tax time.

But I know I'll love getting that check, no matter how big or small it is.
(Be big, be big, be big, be big!!!)

1 Comments:

Blogger PatLam said...

And what if you owe money? *ducks and covers*

2:01 AM  

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