Yearly tax preparation no easy feat

When my daughter Laura was a toddler, she would say, “When I grow up, I’m going to smoke cigarettes and do income taxes like grandma!”

Laura would sit on the couch next to Mom, with one of Mom’s calculators in hand, and wearing play reading glasses, she would scribble on an income tax form while Mom worked on actual income tax returns.

Laura doesn’t smoke, thankfully, and she hasn’t learned how to do income taxes yet. I never expected to do income taxes for other people either, let alone for myself. Mom was always the tax lady and I often thought it was no small coincidence that her birthday is on April 15, on that dreaded tax day deadline, which is only 11 days away.

I repeat, 11 days until tax deadline!

Mom has spent many of her birthdays burning the midnight oil, doing income taxes for others. She was the tax lady in the family.

Strangely, however, the roles have suddenly shifted. Maybe it’s not so strange, thanks to technology, but I found myself saying just this week, “What’s wrong with this picture?” There I was, doing my sister Crisanta’s income tax return for her online, my fourth one this season, myself included. I also did Mom’s income taxes this year.

My income tax clientele has quadrupled this year. That’s because I’ve never done my own income tax return before. Last year a friend walked me through it online, but I didn’t think I could do it by myself. Thanks to simple programs that walk you through the process and even tell you which line to get which information from on your W-2 and other forms, even dummies like me can do income taxes.

I’ve always been afraid of numbers. Math is one of my worse subjects; math and science. And so I tend to walk away, no run, make that run and scream, from anything that involves more than simple addition, subtraction and division.

But then I started thinking to myself, in bed at 5:30 a.m. on Wednesday, wondering what I was going to write my column about this week.

You know ... sometimes we get so focused on the special talents that God has given each one of us that we tend to limit ourselves to those one, two or three things that we know we do well. In the process, we sometimes undermine our own potential in other areas.

Now I’m not saying I’m ready to become a CPA, but it won’t hurt to exercise my brain a little. Old dogs can learn new tricks. Not that I’m old or anything.

This year, I did my own income tax online, along with Crisanta’s, my sister Julie’s and Mom and Dad’s.