Rural Routes, Blog Version

REWIND

(January 1983)

Preparing an income tax return can be as agonizing as going to the dentist. You know it is going to hurt.

Making sense of all those scraps of paper tucked inside a Hush Puppies box is an ordeal. Then there are those bills and receipts that you know you received, but cannot  find.

You know you put them in a safe place. You just didn’t have time right then to dig out the shoebox from under the bed, so you put it someplace else. It was such a good hiding place that even you cannot find it now.

Then there are those intensely dislikable people who write everything down in their account book and tally the results up at one minute after midnight on New Year’s Eve. They just sit back and wait for their appointment with the accountant.

Since wives often get the job  of keeping the books straight, to them falls the task of making sure their husbands provide them with all bills and receipts. It is not always as easy as it sounds.

As one frustrated bookkeeper said, “I’m thinking about turning him upside down every night and shaking him to see what falls out.”

FAST FORWARD

This one is specially relevant right now because I am preparing for our annual accountant visit, but what a difference 30 years has made.

No more shoe boxes. The paperwork wouldn’t fit in just one. Years ago we invested in a filing cabinet to keep the bills and receipts organized.

Our accountant used to give us a book in which to enter all receipts and expenditures. Totalling each column of figures was my responsibility.  But now the computer does all those calculations for me.

Receipts still have a way of disappearing, however. And those safe hiding places of mine are still a well-kept secret, often even from me.