So it's the time of year when the tax business is normally slower and I take a bunch of time off to be lazy. Well the tax biz has not been that slow thanks in part to your local congressman. Lot of law changes and tax updates mean a lot of time reading and mor to the point updating forms and procedures. See when the new First time home buyers credit comes out that will affect 1 in 200 clients we have to make sure we don't miss it or take it whe not allowed to. Further more this little gem as a 16 year ripple effect that we have to be ready to deal with for our current clients and clients we'll get 12 years for now. That a little bit of a headache.
Also when the home energy credits were renewed for 2009, we have to come up with a nice way to tell the people that did energy related improvements in 2008 that they are hosed. B/c while it was renewed for 2009, it skipped 2008. Not to mention that in most cases it's a tiny credit that involves a lot of hoop jumping. In short it's been a huge, huge waste of our time. We probably spent an average of 7 min per client talking about the energy credit, which is 8750 min or 145 hours. If we bill $100/hr that's $14,500 of time that maybee netted all of our clients combined $3,000. That doesn't count the time we spent learning about the credit, training our staff about the credit, or updating our files and procedures to deal with the credit. So like I said, IT'S A HUGE WASTE OF TIME/MONEY FOR EVERYONE. (we haven't even talked about the amount of time and resources that the IRS spent getting rules, forms and procedures ready and training there people to deal with it.
So next time you hear about some little tax credit or rebate (don't even get me started on rebates), or other legislative gem do so with a bit of skepticism. Most of the time no matter how good natured, it's a waste of taxpayer time energy and resources.
But even though business is not as slow as I'd like it to be, Erin and I have managed to get some stuff done around the house. We have redone the nursery, painted the master bedroom, added wardrobes, painted the Family room, kitchen, morning room and dining room, installed garage door openers, bought a new living room set, and got a dining room table.
We had help from both sets of grandparents who watched hank so we could paint. While a bunch of the painting was done in the proceeding 2 to 3 weeks, we went on a bender last weekend. We painted all day Friday until 3am and all day Saturday until 1:30 am. The result was a finished Living room, Kitchen, and morning room. The red was mildly terrifying as it looks like crap until coat 3. But now that it's done... I like it.
