Beware The Ides of March

And thus it was that Julius Caesar met his maker (probably a shock given his Roman religion and that he thought himself to be a god) on Idus Martias, otherwise known as the deadline to file calendar year-end corporate tax returns or extensions. He was stabbed to death by a group of Senators, the final blow coming from his friend, Brutus.

And on this day of celebration for the Roman god of war, Mars, I sit in my office, listening to Grieg's Piano Concerto, doing tax returns.

The 1099 forms are even later this year (thank you, Congress) and the K-1 forms are nowhere to be found (again, thank you, Congress). Brutus and his Liberatores may be long dead, but I feel like the back-stabbing bums in today's Senate are only lacking the white robes splattered with blood. Yes, I know that trying to engender feelings of sympathy for the tax accountants is a losing proposition at best, and that my futile cries for pity are only met with silent apathy, but really, Government Leaders need to spend a few moments trying to do their own tax returns under intense pressure before they start laying out more complicated provisions with shortened deadlines attached.

The reason the 1099s are late is because the IRS and Congress found out that many financial institutions were struggling to provide accurate 1099s by the January 31 deadline. The banks and brokerage houses would send out some misleading filth by the deadline and then issue "corrected" forms later -- sometimes months later. Sometimes they would issue multiple corrected forms as new information would become available. It really was getting out of hand. And the whole mess was only complicated by new reporting legislation to "make the investment industry more transparent". Given recent events, we haven't seen the last of that bit of "Government Help".

So the geniuses decided to extend the 1099 deadline to February 15 in order to "avoid the multiple corrected forms and thus allow the American people to file accurately the first time". I guess there were those who thought they could trust the first set of 1099 forms and would file quickly only to find that a new form required them to amend their return, possibly multiple times.

But did those same geniuses extend the filing deadline to say May 1? No, they just squeezed the time available to file from maybe two and a half months to just two months.

But it gets better. The same problem was happening with partnership and trust K-1 forms. The partnerships were so complicated that they wouldn't finish the K-1s until almost the end of the EXTENDED deadline, let alone April. So the geniuses said, "the American people are having to rush to file their personal returns, thus we will require that all partnerships and trusts can only extend 5 months as opposed to 6." Now most people would think, "Ah, that means we will have a full month to file our personal returns and not be crunched as we were." And they would be correct if they were also totally ignorant of how businesses work. I guarantee that when we get those rushed K-1s, they will be wrong. The amended K-1s will come later, maybe even months later. Which means that more people will have to file amended personal returns.

Of course, some of you out there are saying, "But Accounting Man, doesn't that mean more work, and thus more revenue, for you?" And the answer is "Yes, it does." It also means that I will never run out of work. Never. I will never finish the 2008 filing season, because it will continue into the 2009 filing season next year. I will be perpetually filing returns in order to correct someone else's problem. I could be filing multiple return years simultaneously (you think I'm messed up now, just wait). Oh, and just think of what your reaction will be when your accountant tells you, "yes, we did file timely, but now we have to file again and I will have to charge you again." Those are conversations that can be SO much fun.

The alternative is to just not file the amended return. And then we can respond to the IRS matching notice. In fact, once a client has filed his return, he usually doesn't think that he will be receiving any more data for that year and thus we may not get the amended data until long after the IRS has had time to process it and send out a notice. Yep, it is what my father used to call "a communist plot" to take your money and give it to Government Pigs who are trying to pull the nation out of a recession (or depression, depending on your point of view -- i.e. whether or not you have lost your job too and not just your neighbor). And dealing with IRS auditors is on my list of least favorite activities. They have the audacity to send audit notices NOW. In the middle of filing season. Just another item in a long line of gripes about government workers and their inability to think. And if the intention is to try to catch me off-guard since I am extra busy now (and I suspect that is exactly what they are thinking since I rarely get audit notices during the summer when I have more time available), they are sorely mistaken. It just makes me agitated and more willing to fight them to the death (or at least turn the audit into a refund for my client, which is always good).

So I finish tonight, knowing full well that most of you think I am bitching all the way to the bank. And you are probably right. But if a man is perpetually filing tax returns and fighting incompetent government agents (and yes, they are that stupid -- tenacious, but stupid), when can he enjoy the mounds of cash he is supposedly bringing in?

I hear your groans. But this is my blog and I can cry if I want to. Take your knife out and get back to solving your own problems. Mine will go away soon enough.

And then they'll come back.