It’s January and I’m on a complete and total tax-type roll. You will be happy to know that I, Lori A. Clinch, have not only tallied my payroll data for the entire year of 2006, but have finished and mailed in the quarterly payroll reports up to and including form 941 and form 941N. Not to mention the much-loved and often-envied Combined Tax and Wage Report, form UI-11T.
Are you jealous?
While I’m tooting my own horn, I should mention that I’ve also completed our employees’ W-2s and that wonderful little slice of heaven, form W-3, as well as a lovely and rousing Transmittal of Wages and Tax Statement. What these wonderful forms lack in excitement they make up for in numbers, leaving any bookkeeper and coffee drinker feeling accomplished, invigorated, and downright rejuvenated.
Yet, I’m not as efficient as I’d like to be. Thanks to procrastination and a bad case of dawdling, I’ve spent most of 2006 running here and there and had enjoyed little or no time entering expenses into the computer. No sir, I woke up one day last week to find that rather than becoming a poster child for an IRS campaign titled “This Fool Did It, Now You Can Too!,” I had the entire year of 2006 staring me in the face.
So, just for fun, I tried to accomplish that task and balance the expenses, to no avail. And if you’ve ever balanced a checkbook, I’m sure you’ll agree that there’s nothing in life more stimulating than finding out that one has a discrepancy of $83.96. Except, of course, to discover that one wrote a check for $28.92, which not only does not seem to exist, but doesn’t reconcile the $83.96, and now makes the discrepancy a full and whopping sum of $112.88.
Isn’t that just fun?
While some may consider putting the ledger through the shredder and hitting the sauce, I’m nothing if not persistent. I kept at it like a crazed lunatic and by the time the children came home from school, my hair was standing on end, my head had taken to knocking to the right, and I had been sharpening a pencil with my teeth.
Yet, I shall rise up and I shall persevere. In fact, I plan to complete the checkbook reconciliation just as soon as I finish slamming my head in the desk drawer.
To make matters worse, I scheduled an early meeting with the accountant so that we may make certain that I’ve filled in the Labor Tax form DoU-hateit1009, accurately. Some folks take an eight-hour seminar to learn how to fill in that bad boy. Me, I just bring the accountant a pile of figures that mean nothing to me and a boatload of licorice in hopes that she will crunch the numbers, compute the percentages, carry the 12, multiply it times .052 percent and compile the data, so I can fly home by the seat of my pants.
Following that life-enhancing experience, I’ll need to start working on the 1099s because those are due very soon. Naturally, they’ll have to be validated and filed with form 1096, but that’s not a problem. Form 1096 is simply a reconciliation form and so simple that a drunk monkey could fill it out (good thing, too, because I plan to be tanked at the time.)
FUTA has to be filed by some stinking deadline as well. But again, that one can be done by a sloshed primate, so not to worry. By then I will have moved on to the cooking sherry, nicely blended- double the salt and round the corner, just in time to take it all back to the accountant and pay her another $500 to figure out what we owe so that we can write the IRS a big, fat check that should (if we’ve figured everything correctly) take just about every dime that we’ve earned for the year.
Yes sir, January is nothing short of fun. Stop by the accountant’s office and see me if you get a chance. I shouldn’t be too hard to locate. I’ll be sporting bags under my eyes, an office chair that I can’t seem to remove from my behind, and a paper bonnet that I creatively formed out of a 1099.
Lori Clinch is the mother of four sons and the author of the book “Are We There Yet?” You can reach her at www.loriclinch.com.