2014 is the last year that I have W-2 income from my 27-year gig. There was some severance pay. I appreciate that. Every year from 1965 through 2014 I had "earned income" shown on each successive W-2. For no particular reason I have all those tax returns despite the only requirement for seven years of retention. The last ten or so are all electronic courtesy of TurboTax and PDF retention. It is strange that I have all the paper copies but might actually be missing my 2012 TurboTax working files. That's about the time I started to utilize more cloud storage and it's entirely possible in configuring each of the computers to share the appropriate directories I may have deleted a directory. If my memory serves me correctly www.dropbox.com saves deleted files for 30 days. Given that there are 365 days between one April 15th and another you can see the potential for a problem.
Now I use www.backblaze.com which does backups behind the scenes and given the assumption that I keep paying my bill I should have copies forever. Retrieval is not as quick and simple but that's fine. All of this is getting more complex. Becoming a total nerd I now travel with the $249 Samsung Chromebook, my daily goto PC, a loaded Thinkpad with a few specific applications and all all sorts of backup power things, cables, etc. Also in regular use are a couple of desktops, a great Compaq notebook with a chronic battery problem and a couple of repurposed notebooks running Ubuntu and Fedora Linux.
Some of those computers have external backup USB drives, there is a terabyte or two of Seagate backup hanging off the network and a drawer full of thumb drives and CDs. One of my tasks is to get all this together is a reasonable content management system. That's been my goal for a year and there's only been a very small start.
Here's my recap of taxes for 2014. We have a small business which is an LLC. Taxes are filed on the federal 1065 form. Turbotax Business also produces the K-1s which show the income/losses for the business. I'm using TurboTax Premier or Platinum or Titanium or Kryponite (which is the name of another good backup solution) which intakes K-1, W-2, 1099-INT, 1099-DIV, 1099-B, rental, other small business and farm income. Rental property is interesting because it's considered passive income, more or less all the time despite however many hours you put into repairs, dealing with tenants, etc. There is a cap on how much loss you can claim. The consulting business come through as well and more or less loses money. The farm is a sinkhole. Each year as I close in on APR 15th it strikes me that most farms and beekeeping operations must lose money and if your food business/cafe makes money it's a fluke.
I spent most of the weekend on taxes and most of that time on the parts that lose money. Finally at 11PM I'd have enough. Unfortunately I'm reminded that last year, this year and other years around this time I start to dream about tax forms and TurboTax and checking all my lists that remind me to check passive loss limits, farm conservation expenses, property tax allocations, insurance costs, etc. It seems that I spend more and more time working on tax issues that simply don't apply to my particular situation.
This leads me to restate my closing Facebook post of yesterday: "by the time I finish my taxes I hate pencils." Obviously I don't really hate taxes. It's simply that Quickbooks, TurboTax files, spreadsheets, etc., all get to be a bit much, and why is it that banks don't recognize my pain and keep all transactions and check images and credit card transactions online for eighteen months to ease the pain. My credi union likes to respond to that query with "we recommend that you download your transaction history every three months." I simply stare and think about hating pencils.
Fifty years of W-2 income might be enough. Late last week I had a good conversation with another co-worker who I respected. He's 64 and I offered to share everything I know about Social Security with him. He asked if I was doing anything "professionally." I am but certainly there is no evidence that anyone is going to give me a W-2 or a 1099 for 2015. It's possible I'll get a 1099 from Google or Amazon. That's my single income goal for 2015. I think that 1099 income might represent more enthusiasm, more expertise, more innovation, simply more intellectual opportunities than W-2 income. Some people figure that out much earlier in life.
Taxes will be complex for 2015 but I see more focus and simpler rewards for 2016. By then I will not make ridiculous statements about hating pencils.
Of course in the dark, not sleeping, thinking about tax forms, I thought "why don't your just get a gig doing taxes." Why didn't I think of that before?
I hate intuit
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