Sigh, it is that time of year again and as always, I’ll try to steer clear of politics. This post is more about process and how we’ve come to where we have with the whole business. I don’t think it’s political to say we have an atrocious tax system since both parties have managed to complicate it to an absurd degree. We’ve needed actual, logical tax reform for about the past forty years, but when it becomes as byzantine as our system is, there are no easy solutions.

So, okay, we gave up on doing our own taxes – even with the good tax software that is on the market – a number of years ago. When you own rental property it can really add to the chance of making an error and the actual situation that pushed us toward a professional isn’t important. The folks we use are not a nationally recognized name, and we have no idea how they do what they do, but they are worth what we pay. When we get the final packet which is thicker than some of my manuscripts, it reminds us of why we turned it over to them. The way we divide the workload is, I gather all the documentation, organize it, and pass it to Hubby. He takes that and fills out the forms our tax folks use to do their part. Last year wasn’t bad – I think they only had a few follow-up questions. We are extremely conservative with what we declare and that’s okay. People who take pleasure in seeking out the most obscure deductions are welcome to it.

The goal is to try and have everything shipped off by Feb 27th, but we rarely manage to meet that. Maybe this year – we’ll see.