Accountability

This is the time of year when a slight dis­com­fort grips my thoughts. A stack of doc­u­ments of all shapes and col­ors awaits to be clas­si­fied, cal­cu­lat­ed. Although every year I tell myself that I will no longer be doing it again and that I will do the job as I go along, I invari­ably find myself in Feb­ru­ary spend­ing three hours col­lect­ing the papers, div­ing into my account­ing to pre­pare myself for taxes.

The pic­ture says a lot. On the one hand, if there is an ordered uni­verse, it is on my com­put­er. On the oth­er hand, the essen­tial and low-rise paper­work, which, by an annu­al mir­a­cle, man­ages to get my full atten­tion, have wait­ed wise­ly for its time, between the slots of a full briefcase.

I’m not orig­i­nal in say­ing that I hate doing my tax­es. Despite the sim­plic­i­ty of the exer­cise, I am a self-employed work­er, and I must take into account the expens­es of this, the rev­enues of that, mys­te­ri­ous cal­cu­la­tions with all that, etc. Even if I use ded­i­cat­ed soft­ware, I feel like I’m going to make a mis­take, that I’ll miss the deals and that, any­way, I’ll get screwed. I am in good faith, I seem to be doing the right thing since gov­ern­ments have been accept­ing my state­ments all this time… Why are tax­es not made like in France where each cit­i­zen receives, when the time comes, a form already filled in ?

I mind my own busi­ness, my accounts are paid, but it is clear that account­ing and I do two. But I was dif­fer­ent about ten years ago. That does­n’t mat­ter. If I’m good at ham­mer­ing and pro­gram­ming, I can cer­tain­ly con­trol my finances !

I will be told that we must bud­get. Well, so be it ! I buy this soft­ware that runs beau­ti­ful­ly and pro­claims what it says : You need a bud­get. A lit­tle rig­or, Mr. Verville !

2019 PS : I failed completely.