Chris Remus is a Fancy Hands aficionado, so much so, that he has figured out a way to take the pain out of tax season with the help of Fancy Hands. Chris has written a two-part guest post on how you can also take the pain out of your own tax season. Enjoy Part One below, and stay tuned for Part Two tomorrow!
Updated 3/9/16: Chris is offering the entire eBook for free with the code "justrollingwithit"!
Just over one-third of us like doing our taxes, yep, really...at least according to a Pew Research Center study conducted in 2013. This post isn’t for those people. This post is for the over 56% of us that either dislike or even hate doing their taxes. I fall into this category of people and am guessing you do too, if you’re still reading :)
For people like us, tax season can be a source of pain, that manifests as a combination of stress, tension, and anxiety. Because of this pain, we may find ourselves trying to avoid it as long as possible, by putting-off doing our taxes to the very last minute. As a result, we haphazardly rush to collect all the information we need to file and either complete the required forms as best and quickly as we can or dump the information on our accountant to do it for us.
This approach leaves us with even more (and now lingering) stress, since we’re afraid that in our rush to get the taxes done and off of our plate, at least until next tax season, we may have made a costly mistake along the way.
A few years ago, I began to believe there had to be a better way to approach tax season and reduce the pain resulting from stress, tension, and anxiety that would build along the way. OK, I thought to myself, if tax season is going to be painful, maybe I can make it less painful by being better prepared when it rolls around each year, or in my case, as a small business owner, multiple times a year.
Daily Worth reinforces what most of us already know, yet still rarely carry-through with, by reminding us that getting a jump on taxes is -
Worth the Effort
What if just a few hours — or even minutes — of effort could result in hundreds, maybe even thousands, more dollars in your bank account? You’d make the effort, right?
Well, maybe. At tax time each year, many of us take shortcuts or overlook important items that cost us big bucks, payable to Uncle Sam. Next year, don’t pay more than you owe. Rather than waiting until the last minute then rushing to file your taxes on time, start early and put in a little time. Do more research. Plan ahead. And you’ll be able to avoid these costly tax mistakes.
What I discovered was that, by setting up a system to collect tax information throughout the year, collecting tax information became so easy to do, I actually did it in advance of each tax season. As result, I became better prepared for each tax season. Being better prepared meant spending less time on taxes during tax season, which also meant less tax season pain. This past April, for example, the time I spent on collecting my tax information and getting it to my accountant dropped from what used to be hours to under 30 minutes!
After experiencing the wave of relief that came along with this pretty drastic reduction, I decided to document the system I used, in the hope of sharing this tax pain relief with others. The result is an eBook called Tax Pain Relief that is based on three very simple principles.
Fancy Hands has been instrumental in keeping me on track, as I developed Tax Pain Relief, while balancing a number of other projects, as well as a my personal life. Looking at my account, it turns out that January 30, 2015 marks my two year anniversary as a very happy client and heavy user of Fancy Hands. The stats on the Fancy Hands dashboard tell me that over the past two years I’ve made 885 requests and that Fancy Hands has placed 777 calls, spent 2.1 days on the phone, sent 167 emails, and scheduled 2378 events for me.
Everything that Fancy Hands has done for me allows me to focus on the things that I actually need to do myself, essentially the places where my time is most valuable. To me this is one of the biggest value-adds that virtual assistants provide and the Fancy Hands assistants excel at providing this value.
Another really big value-add is that Fancy Hands can do things for us that we may have an aversion to doing, however that still need to get done, in essence helping us fight through our own mental barriers and keeping us out of trouble :) Taxes fall squarely into this category for me.
For example, as a small business owner, one of the reasons I subconsciously delay doing my taxes is to avoid coming face-to-face with the reality that a lot of the hard-earned money sitting in my bank really isn’t mine, since a good chunk of that cash needs to be paid in taxes. This sub-conscious avoidance mechanism also would also contribute to me putting-off my taxes to the 11th hour, only compounding the stress, tension and anxiety I would experience each tax season.
So since taxes are something I really hate doing, wouldn’t it be great if Fancy Hands could help me get them done, while making sure I don’t put things off until the last minute in the process? Putting a system like Tax Pain Relief in place also opens the door to allowing Fancy Hands help you take even more pain out of tax time.
As a matter of fact, even before you get started setting-up your own system to take some pain out of tax time, Fancy Hands can help you prepare to make each tax season less painful by:
1. Adding key tax deadlines to your calendar. Ask Fancy Hands to either research a good calendar of key tax dates for you or contact your accountant for one.
2. Reminding you about key tax deadlines throughout the year, with sufficient advance notice to address them. Ask Fancy Hands to add recurring reminders to your calendar events, set up the reminders in a service like Resnooze, or if you need some extra help, schedule recurring Fancy Hands tasks to remind you when key tax activities need to get done. I like this last option a lot, since if you’re experienced with Fancy Hands, you know they won’t quit reminding until you get done what you need to do ;)
In the second part of this series, I’ll introduce you to how the three principles of Tax Pain Relief and Fancy Hands can help you take the pain out of tax time.
P.S. - If you decide to give Tax Pain Relief a shot, use code “FANCYHANDS” at check-out to receive 10% off the purchase price and access to a lifetime of free updates to the eBook.
Check out Part 2 here.
