Hi Again!
Well, it has been a long gap in my postings. I wish I could say it's because I've had my head deep in the world of Sunborn, but the truth is, it's because tax return time is upon us and I'd fallen a year behind in my bookkeeping. So I've been living in receipts and Quicken, and am about to dive into Turbotax. (For those of you not from the U.S., we have this national ritual in the weeks and months leading up to April 15 every year, when everyone has to file their income tax return with the national government. It's no fun for anyone, but for self-employed people like writers, artists, and small business owners, it's an exercise in accounting torture.) However, I'm starting to glimpse a few stray photons, which I hope are the first promises of the light at the end of the tunnel. And praying it's not a freight train coming the other way.
I-Con was great fun, by the way—for me, but maybe even moreso for my family. We saw a number of friends, made a couple of new ones, and indeed got to say hello to George Takei (Star Trek's Sulu) and Ron Glass (Firefly). I had a brief but pleasant chat with Richard Hatch (Battlestar Galactica). The con was far more media-oriented than most I go to, and it seemed as if there were hardly any actual books being sold in the dealer's room—and yet I sold more copies of my own books at the autograph table than I have in most recent cons that were more book oriented. And, I got my first look at the middle and outer end of Long Island, very pretty.
I have a whole bunch of links to quirky things stored up to mention here, but that'll have to be for next time. Right now, I really do need to get to work on the book!
Labels: Battlestar Galactica
posted by Jeffrey A. Carver @ 1:21 AM
3 comments
3 Comments:
You may be onto something there. Periodically there's talk of simplifying the tax code--but the truth is, that wouldn't do much to help self-employed business owners, who will always have to do laborious calculations to figure out what the actual taxable profit is from their business. Nor would it do away with the other complication I deal with (we have a two-family house, so there are rental expenses and income to account for). Oh well, it's still better than not having income. :)
why not hire an accountant? for my wife and i for our taxes this year it cost us $82. That's with the normal w2's along with a couple various investments.
Big difference between that and self-employment, which is essentially a small business. It would probably cost me about $500, maybe more. I used to pay someone, but discovered that a huge part of the work was getting everything into a form in which the tax preparer could use it. Once I'm to that point, I might as well just finish the job with Turbotax.
Some years I think about going back to paying someone. The problem is that there are lots of depreciation-type things that the software keeps track of in the background. If I skipped a year, I couldn't go back without having to reconstruct a lot of stuff I only marginally understand.
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