Death and Taxes

Pardon my lack of posting recently, friends. I have been trying to put to bed my business taxes, late as they are due to the death of my own father and that of my business partner's within 4o days of each other. Needless to say, neither of us gave a "fig" as an ex-boyfriend's mom used to say, about business, taxes and especially not our business taxes.

So how is it going now? Well, all I can say is that I am a convert to the whole "simplification of the tax code" movement.

Holy mother of god, y'all. We are a tiny partnership. We made, like, less than almost no money last year (which was really only a half-year in actual business). We own no real assets. We have zero overhead. We have no employees. We have no depreciation or appreciation of assets. We're just two people in business, making a living through the biblically-sanctioned "sweat of our brows." So doing the taxes for such a simple little enterprise ought to be a piece of cake, right?

Ha ha. You read my foreshadowing, didn't you? It has been a total f'ing nightmare. Everyone says, "you should have hired an accountant." Thank you. I'll get right on that for this year. However, who could have imagined that a wee little consulting concern could require accounting assistance costing almost more than we made last year total in order to file the taxes for said consulting concern?! It is total f'ing horsesh*t.

Every form I fill out seems to have a line that says something like the following:

Line 4d: Apportionable Income (Owner's share from PTE's Schedule 123A, Part B or Part C or 100%)

Okay. So do I now need to fill out Schedule 123A? Okay. So I download Schedule 123A which, you guessed it, has a line that says something like:

Line 3f: Apportionment Percentage (Owner's share from PTE's Schedule 166A, Part A, Line 4)

Okay. So do I now need to fill out Schedule 166A? Okay.

It's like a freakin' piece of MC Escher performance art. Every stairwell leads to...another...the same?...stairwell. Or a Rube Goldberg installation: the simplest way to find out that I owe you $800 is to make me fill out 4 different forms, each with no fewer than 13 pages of "instructions."

So. I have not been blogging. I have been attempting with all my might to render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's, if only he'd meet me half way. At the very least, all of the profanity and sulking at Chez Haggis notwithstanding, I feel somewhat comforted to be in such august company as Einstein himself, who said:

"This [preparing my tax return] is too difficult for a mathematician. It takes a philosopher."

Wish me luck. And a short jail sentence.