Tax Time

As far as shopping seasons go, the late-January through mid-April season is a pretty good one. The suckers who are going to buy a treadmill and get in shape this year have already done it, so the stores are free to have sales on good stuff like towels, sheets and home office organization stuff.
I love that, starting in January, people are supposed to "get organized" and get ready to do their taxes. All the neat paper-organizing systems are on sale right now, along with highlighters (huh?) and shredders (vrooom! vroooom!).
I have some news for you people buying highlighters and accordion files - if you don't have your FY 2005 tax stuff organized already, it's too late!! Now is the time to start desperately riffling through your shoe boxes full of paperwork in the quest for documentable evidence that can earn you a tax credit. Now is not the time to start organizing last year's restaurant receipts, going over each one to figure out if it's deductible.
Or maybe this is the second wind of new year's resolutions - this year, I'm going to keep my receipts and other financial papers filed neatly.
Yeah, right. Go dust off your treadmill and get back to me April 16.