The Blog of Xangis

It was an 11-hour-long tax form session.

The tax system is unbearably and unnecessarily complicated and I’m pretty sure it doesn’t do anyone any good to have it that complicated - at least not those paying or receiving the taxes, it’s just the intermediaries that benefit.

Why was it so rough?

Last summer I had a severe garage fire.  Losses after insurance were somewhere about $12k+.  Plenty of forms to fill out for that.

I also had about 70 stock trades in 2006, mostly selling off 0-3 shares of various stocks with fractional components that had been held in a Sharebuilder account and then transferred to a Scottrade account.  These stocks were dividend-reinvested, so calculating the cost basis was fairly complicated.  In the transfer process, fractional shares were automatically sold off by Sharebuilder and then the remaining stocks were later sold in the Scottrade account.  What’s that mean?  Sorting it all out was like trying to swallow a porcupine, but slightly less fun.

The good news is that I should be getting back about $2.5k in total.  Enough to keep the self and the business floating for a month or two longer (depending on how large the next magazine print run needs to be - still working on distributors, which will get easier as soon as I have the UPC in my hand - ETA ~ 1 week).

I have yet to do the taxes for Zeta Centauri Inc, but it shouldn’t be that rough since I didn’t do that much in 2006 - just started up, bought a few stories, and made a few eBay trades.  2007 will be the interesting year for ZC now that I’m selling actual product.  I’m sure that I’ll owe zero tax for 2006 and 2007 thanks to lack of postitive cashflow.  That’s how startup companies go…

I hope to pay a ton of corporate taxes for 2008.  That would be a Very Good Thing.  (profit = taxes)