Life's Not-So-Little Victories
Apr. 14th, 2010 07:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
captainsblogIt's been a stressful day. Week. Month, even year to some extent. Even though we finished making payments on a major financial commitment earlier this year, there was still the imminent arrival of Tax Day to deal with. Months ago, I projected out how much we could afford to sock into an IRA for 2009, in order to reduce both our tax bill for 2009 and our "parental contribution," as it's known, for Emily's 2010-11 education. To help ::koff:: with this process, our gummint allows you to make contributions up until April 15th of the following year, but unlike extensions of the return itself, this deadline is hard and fast and the money has to be on deposit, not merely mailed in, by midnight on Tax Day Proper.
The biggest single piece of this puzzle was a fee which I earned, fair and square, from a client who successfully emerged from Chapter 11 at the end of last month. (Nationwide, only about 10 percent of Chapter 11s succeed. My batting average is closer to .500. The goodness and decency of the clients, who I tend to be a bit picky about, helps with that.) Creditors and other parties had until March 19 to object to my getting paid. None did. It should therefore have been easy peasy to approve that payment anytime even before, possibly at, and certainly right after, the final court hearing on March 25th.
You know where this is going, right?
I called. Many times. Subtly. Graciously. Ultimately, making it very clear that there were Tax Consequences based on when it got paid and could they at least tell me if it would be before or after today (tomorrow being, for logistical purposes, essentially a day too late.)
At last, at about 2 this afternoon, the order came through, on my iPhone. Which I managed, in my haste, to send to the Trash. By the time I recovered (the document as well as my fallen crest), the court clerk had called me to tell me it'd been approved in full. By then, I was already on the way back to B-lo, but a quick email to the client produced a reply in 10 minutes, a check in half an hour and a today's-date deposit an hour after that which will solve the immediate problem and, quite probably, combine with one other payment I expect tomorrow to get our rather substantial annual remaining income tax bill paid on time, and in full, for the first time in the four years I've been self-employed. (See the part above about "goodness and decency of the clients.") It enabled me to write a check, to be deposited tomorrow on the deadline, which is almost the maximum we could contribute for 2009 and which brings us back above a psychologically important level of retirement savings (though still way less than we should have at this stage) for the first time in at least five years.
It will not be enough to pay the first estimated-tax chunk for the current year, cleverly made due on the same damn day, but the late-payment penalties for those are negligible compared to not getting the previous-year balance in on time. (One other Hint from Hell-Louise: even if you can't pay your tax bill tomorrow if you have one, always Always ALWAYS file on time, or at least confirm an extension to file. The nonpayment penalties are much lower than the ones for not at least filing the return on time.)
The next two days will be hellish, between five different client commitments and having, somewhere in there, to actually deposit the IRA money and actually file and postmark the returns/payments (no word yet if our local Post Office is joining the national trend of not staying open late on April 15 to postmark returns up until The Last Minute). But some sections of hell are worse than others, and this day's events have clearly gotten us out of the deepest circles:)
The biggest single piece of this puzzle was a fee which I earned, fair and square, from a client who successfully emerged from Chapter 11 at the end of last month. (Nationwide, only about 10 percent of Chapter 11s succeed. My batting average is closer to .500. The goodness and decency of the clients, who I tend to be a bit picky about, helps with that.) Creditors and other parties had until March 19 to object to my getting paid. None did. It should therefore have been easy peasy to approve that payment anytime even before, possibly at, and certainly right after, the final court hearing on March 25th.
You know where this is going, right?
I called. Many times. Subtly. Graciously. Ultimately, making it very clear that there were Tax Consequences based on when it got paid and could they at least tell me if it would be before or after today (tomorrow being, for logistical purposes, essentially a day too late.)
At last, at about 2 this afternoon, the order came through, on my iPhone. Which I managed, in my haste, to send to the Trash. By the time I recovered (the document as well as my fallen crest), the court clerk had called me to tell me it'd been approved in full. By then, I was already on the way back to B-lo, but a quick email to the client produced a reply in 10 minutes, a check in half an hour and a today's-date deposit an hour after that which will solve the immediate problem and, quite probably, combine with one other payment I expect tomorrow to get our rather substantial annual remaining income tax bill paid on time, and in full, for the first time in the four years I've been self-employed. (See the part above about "goodness and decency of the clients.") It enabled me to write a check, to be deposited tomorrow on the deadline, which is almost the maximum we could contribute for 2009 and which brings us back above a psychologically important level of retirement savings (though still way less than we should have at this stage) for the first time in at least five years.
It will not be enough to pay the first estimated-tax chunk for the current year, cleverly made due on the same damn day, but the late-payment penalties for those are negligible compared to not getting the previous-year balance in on time. (One other Hint from Hell-Louise: even if you can't pay your tax bill tomorrow if you have one, always Always ALWAYS file on time, or at least confirm an extension to file. The nonpayment penalties are much lower than the ones for not at least filing the return on time.)
The next two days will be hellish, between five different client commitments and having, somewhere in there, to actually deposit the IRA money and actually file and postmark the returns/payments (no word yet if our local Post Office is joining the national trend of not staying open late on April 15 to postmark returns up until The Last Minute). But some sections of hell are worse than others, and this day's events have clearly gotten us out of the deepest circles:)
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no subject
Date: 2010-04-15 06:02 pm (UTC)Perhaps they felt that you didn't have enough pressure and drama in your life, and were trying to remedy that? ;)
no subject
Date: 2010-04-16 12:54 am (UTC)My psychologist says that in his decades, now, of being self-employed, sometimes he couldn't make his quarterlies, but you know, you do your best and you work at it and eventually you get it sorted out. It's been interesting for me to realize that while I assumed growing up poor gave me a lack of business sense... I forget that I grew up in a business in tough economic times... and that I have a pretty good idea of how things work, compared to kids who didn't see that.