Some people have their taxes taken from them by their employers before they even see them. It's a safe way to live. You have protection. You never had the tax money in your accounts. So you don't miss it as much when it has to go. But If you're a small business owner like me, you experience tax first hand. It's like driving a manual car. You get the full sensation of the fiscal road. We like it raw. Blasting out our hard earned cash online in real time. Filling in the numbers and pressing confirm. It's a form of economic flagellation.
Provisional taxes feel especially good. Not only are you up to date, you are ahead. You are paying next year's tax. You sleep pretty good after that.
Most of us suffer from mental blocks. There are a bunch of easy things in our lives that for some reason we can't force ourselves to do. Paying parking tickets, checking the oil, clearing the gutters. Emails we need to answer, conversations we need to have with our kids, dog leavings we need to pick up.
But day after day we just leave these little things sitting there, on the neighbour's berm. Covered in flies. Stinking up the street. Yet the more annoying the job, the better we feel when it's done. Sort out one of those small things every day and life gets incrementally better. You're achieving annoying little goals like stages in a video game. It's satisfying.
Taxes are the biggest and ugliest of the things you need to get round too. The boss battle. If you don't mow the lawns today you will survive. Don't do your taxes and they'll eventually take you away. That's why it feels so good when you get them done.
We just paid a massive tax bill. One I knew I had to pay but couldn't bring myself to do it. It just sat there stuck to the fridge. Nearly cried when the letter arrived. Went through several stages of grief. Denial, anger. But eventually I reached the final stage of tax grief: acceptance. You can't fight it. The government was always going to take the money from you so it's never really yours. So I grabbed my laptop in the middle of the night and emptied my accounts into the nation's hands. Went back to sleep. Relieved. Then woke up 10 minutes later freaked out that I'd entered the wrong IRD number. Got up checked it, then went back to bed and slept like a baby.
"Tis impossible to be sure of anything but Death and Taxes" is an annoying old Christopher Bullock quote from 1716 which Benjamin Franklin famously ripped off in 1789. It's also an idiom you legally have to put in any article on tax.
As my Dad used to say if you live in a hotel you have to pay the bill. It feels good being a contributing member of society who won't be going to jail anytime soon. Obviously you're hollowed out, debt-ridden and moving ever closer to death by the second but briefly free from tax worry. Good times.
