I didn’t post yesterday because I started out by reclaiming my office after putting together my Garden Club newsletter, then moved on to assembling materials for our taxes. In the evening we went to see Tom’s school’s production of The Glass Menagerie, Tennessee Williams’ angst-filled family drama. Just another day in Paradise.
The thing that bothers me most about doing the taxes is not the work itself or even the fact that we’ll have to pay this year--it’s our accountant. He’s a brilliant and down-to-earth man, financially astute, and uber-conservative about the IRS. I like him. But he would be happiest if we gave the government all our money and let them dole out to us what they saw fit. (Or is that what already happens?)
He’s going to think that the withholding on one account is still not enough, or that with two other disbursements I decided to wait till the end of the year to pay what we owed. Because he’s a financial planner for large estates, he doesn’t quite approve of our disinterest in money: We get it, we spend it, we try to do some good with it, but it’s not our focus; I don’t write books you can take to the bank. He makes me feel like some slap-happy hippie planning a world tour instead of paying the light bill.
That said, he knows everything about the Tax Code and in 20+ years we’ve never been audited. It’s also not his fault that I look at our list of charitable contributions and think, The world is in crisis! Why didn’t we do more!
What does this have to do with “stuff?” I guess it goes back to Sister Jose Hobday’s philosophy of the simple life and her vow of poverty. Time to get back to that.
The thing that bothers me most about doing the taxes is not the work itself or even the fact that we’ll have to pay this year--it’s our accountant. He’s a brilliant and down-to-earth man, financially astute, and uber-conservative about the IRS. I like him. But he would be happiest if we gave the government all our money and let them dole out to us what they saw fit. (Or is that what already happens?)
He’s going to think that the withholding on one account is still not enough, or that with two other disbursements I decided to wait till the end of the year to pay what we owed. Because he’s a financial planner for large estates, he doesn’t quite approve of our disinterest in money: We get it, we spend it, we try to do some good with it, but it’s not our focus; I don’t write books you can take to the bank. He makes me feel like some slap-happy hippie planning a world tour instead of paying the light bill.
That said, he knows everything about the Tax Code and in 20+ years we’ve never been audited. It’s also not his fault that I look at our list of charitable contributions and think, The world is in crisis! Why didn’t we do more!
What does this have to do with “stuff?” I guess it goes back to Sister Jose Hobday’s philosophy of the simple life and her vow of poverty. Time to get back to that.
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