Tax Time

My house looks like it has been hit by a tornado, which can only mean one thing.

Tax time.

Ah, the unglamorous tax time. My brain is mushy from figuring out how to not soil my perfect score of never owing any income tax. Seems that 2007 was a big income earning year for me and I am thinking I may not be able to reduce the number to one so small I make homeless people snicker. Nope, looks like this may the first year I am going to OWE taxes. Frustrating. Although I see its silver lining. To have at least one year's tax return be eligible for something like a credit application or a mortgage can't be all bad. Of course, 2008 is shaping up to bring my gross income (not to mention my net income) back to Shamesville. So, who knows what affect one good year will have.

In my SEP classes this week we spoke about Insurance. Insurance! Boo, I say. The topic couldn't be more boring if it tried and will probably only be paralleled by next week's classes on GST and Saskatchewan Labour Laws. All this piled onto Tax Time and my eyes start to glaze over. No wonder most of my artistic friends hide from the realities of all this stuff. It is about as creative as dirt. Most actors I know don't file taxes until they've built up to some horrible monster and then they sheepishly cart piles of paper to some random H&R Block in the mall where they end up owing so much money that take their names out of phone books and screen all their cell phone calls. In comparison to them, I am a virtual Donald Trump with my color coded filing systems and my business classes. Yet, I feel their pain. No one teaches you that being an artist is just a euphemism for being an entrepreneur. An actor is essentially a business person who makes very little money and talks really loudly.

I had better go clean. Truth is, I am blogging to avoid.

Oooo, just one more second of avoiding...an interesting tidbit...today is my mother's last day of work EVER. When she leaves work today she will never have to go back ever again for the rest of her life and YET she will still be sent cheques in the mail every month!

If only artists had pensions.