Give me Tylenol or Give me Death

Don't you just hate tax season? I know I do. Jack gets all grumpy, worrying about how much the feds are going to take us for this year. We always spend one day totaling all our receipts for the year in preparation for our annual visit to the accountant.

I have never wanted to be an accountant. I hate math in all forms. The only numbers I like are the ones in my checking account, and often those are dismal as well. We've always had an accountant who took wonderful care of our payroll and handled all of the lovely monthly, quarterly and yearly reports that go with it. She would always send copies of these papers home with me when I picked up our checks for the week, and they were so confusing, I often didn't even know where to file them.

However, last year our accountant's office stopped doing payroll. We began searching for a new accountant to handle all of that gross stuff, until Jack finally settled on one. Me.

It was a brilliant plan, really. I could learn the ins and outs of what it takes to run a business, and we could save 75- 100 bucks a month. A friend of ours, who conveniently lives in our neighborhood and happens to be an accountant extraordinaire, offered to come over and get me set up.

Wonderful.

So for the past year, I've been handling all of this numbers mumbo jumbo garbage headache. In case you can't tell, I'm not too fond of this responsibility. It's quite the little pain in my little behind. So far, we haven't been late filing anything, although I was sure I would forget at least once. And I have been so pleased that I haven't received any notices from the IRS saying I had made quite a mess of things and they were returning the favor with a hefty fine. Although it's never too late for the IRS to jump in and ruin my life.

I got pretty used to handling the monthly responsibilities, which weren't too bad. Just the sales tax and EFTPS deposits. (Aren't you impressed?) I've only just gotten a good handle on the quarterlies-after 4 rounds, I think I finally understand them. Just in time for the year-end goodness.

Ever since I reluctantly agreed to take on this job, after making Jack sign a waiver to indemnify and hold me harmless from any huge mistakes I might make in the learning process, I've been dreading this month.

JANUARY

Time for W2s. I really didn't even know what those things were. I've seen them before, but just a glimpse. But I knew they would be trouble. So I call my friend/neighbor/accountant Sarah and tell her it's time to do our W2s and could she please come over and resuscitate me?

She said sure and did I have the forms yet? Turns out I had to order them. Whoops. So fast forward 2 weeks, forms in hand, here comes Sarah. She breezes in, points here and there and everywhere, put this number here and these numbers go there. Ignore this column, but you have to fill this part in. Section 12 you leave blank, but after you add this column in your spreadsheet you have to put the total in space 1, 3, 5 and 16. Also, you canNOT staple any of these federal returns, but you HAVE to staple the ones that go to the state...

After resuscitation and a large glass of wine, I was ready to go. Sarah was gone, but not before she reminded me that I also had to fill out an annual information return for the state as well. Even though I've been reporting to them every quarter, they still wanted me to go ahead and send in ANOTHER form saying that I had been reporting to them every quarter. So efficient.

I went about halfway through all the forms, and I have to admit, I was feeling pretty good about myself. I had successfully filled in our name, address and ID #, plus the name, address and SSN of every employee for the year. No numbers yet, but I was working my way there, and my hand needed a break.

I casually flipped through the forms. Cue the creepy music. They were in sextuplet. Six pages of carbon copy for each form. I hadn't pressed hard enough on any of them, and the last page was illegible. So I had to go back and press down really hard on each form and carefully imprint the same info over again. On top of the existing info. My hand was throbbing after one form. I had six of them. It's been a long day.

We are going to have to wait a week or two before I'm ready to go through our receipts from last year. I need a vacation.