misAdventures of Workmonkey 3.0

I had a certified C.P.A do my taxes this year for the first time ever.

Partly due to me being a cheap piece of shit, and partly because of Lee being a cheap piece of shit which made me even more of a cheap piece of shit, I've always insisted on doing my own taxes. In my head, this was saving me about $300 hundred dollars a year, or whatever the cost of an accountant might be. Doing my own taxes always seemed fine, as I usually only had one W-2, and didn't own stocks or houses or farming equipment or estate taxes incurred by offshore transactions or elderly medicine distribution licenses (all that weird tax shit that I never understood). I also felt qualified to do my own taxes because I got an A- in my freshman year accounting class at SCU, which is quite a bit better than the grade Kenta got, if memory serves correct.

Last year, for the first time, I discovered the hard way doing my taxes had grown beyond my skill level. My taxes included money owed on freelance income, meaning I actually had to keep track of business dinners and cell phone bills and proportional ratios of home offices and all that shit. Unfortunately, being that it was close to April 15th, it was too late to pull in real help. The best I could do was to pay about 100 bucks to use some "tax professional" via H&R Block's online service. She was one of the thousands of retired women H&R Block hires during tax season for this exact purpose, and basically knew less about taxes then I did. I think she took some sort of class at the Learning Annex for a week, and then H&R Block certified her to "check" taxes over to ensure there were no mistakes. It turns out the only mistake I had made was signing up to use her in the first place, as she said I did my taxes "without error" and then presumably went back to the quilt she was working on. I ended up having to pay about $4,000 in taxes based on my extra freelance income. It sucked, but wasn't unexpected.

This year I was determined to get real help. I had freelance money, extra taxes from 401K loan (long story), a job change, and, with my purchase of a grain silo, farming equipment. Through a referral, I set up an appointment with the accountant. Before heading over, however, I used the tax estimator on H&R Block to determine what I would owe if doing taxes myself. The estimate was similar to last year: Once again, I would owe $4,000 in taxes. I figured if the accountant could even save me $300, then it would be worth the $275 it was costing me.

Suffice to say, after a half-hour of him going through my returns and asking a few questions, he looked up and said he had bad news: He could only get me a few hundred dollars back. What? Money back? You mean i don't owe? No, he said, you don't owe. Damn. He saved me $4,000. In typical fashion, the elation over having saved $4000 was quickly eclipsed by the regret of not having had a professional do my taxes before. How much money have I lost over the past few years? Worst of all, as he explained it to me, it was all legitimate .. deductions I never knew I was allowed to take, because, well, as I said I only got an A- in accounting, not an A ... Apparently, the difference between the two is about $4,000.

So, remember that $300 dollars I've been saving all these years? Well, lesson learned. Sometimes saving money costs more than spending it. Hopefully, none of you are still making that same mistake.