My dirty little secret

I've been trying to declutter my house over the past couple of days. I wonder sometimes if clutter isn't somehow related to tribbles--it just breeds on its own, and there's no stopping it. While I was wading through yet another mound of papers, I found several documents that made me realize something: tax season is once again upon us. And here's my dirty little secret: I actually like taxes.

Okay, let me clarify. It's not that I like paying taxes, I like preparing tax returns. I discovered this almost ten years ago when we were stationed in Oklahoma. I wasn't too fond of my job at the time, and my squadron was deployed so it was kind of slow at the office. I was looking for valid reasons to get out, so I volunteered for the base tax office. We had about a week of training, and then we went at it. I didn't do anything very complicated the first year--no schedule A's even, mainly 1040EZ's. It was actually a lot of fun, so I volunteered again the next year, and learned more complicated returns. I quit volunteering when I started having kids, but the experience has stayed with me. It's made me wonder if I'd had a similar experience while still in college, if I would've chosen to become an accountant instead of majoring in biology. (As if I didn't have enough trouble making up my mind as it was--I bounced from computer science to linguistics to biology. Accounting would kind of round that out, wouldn't it?)


This year's return will be the most complicated we've had so far, what with three state returns (Nate's NY return, then OH and CO), and our regular federal return, plus rental income and sale of some stock. I'm sure I could figure it all out if I tried, but I'm feeling kind of lazy this year. I may just cheat and get some kind of tax program to do all the math for me. It's the figuring things out that I like, not the computations.

But before I can get to that point, I have to sort through my clutter and collect all those documents and receipts. Hmmm....anyone want to borrow some kids for a week while I manage that?