The Five Stages of Tax Preparation

1. Lurking Dread

For some sufferers, also known as U.S. citizens and residents, the First Stage of Tax Preparation can begin as early as November, when notices about the tax forms for your various loans, savings, or investment accounts — as well as charity appeals hoping to galvanize you into donations you can claim in this tax year — begin to appear. When dealing with the Lurking Dread Stage, especially as a freelancer or self-employed person, it can be helpful to break this period, typically lasting anywhere from one to three months, into two parts, to help you cope (though of course this does not include the low-grade, year-round dismay of squirreling away and making your estimated quarterly tax payments).

I Don’t Have To Think About This Until After December

You can feel those first twinges of dread, but hey, there’s still about a third of a year before you absolutely have to cope with this. Besides, you have so much to do just to get through the holidays right now.

Crap, My W-2s and/or 1099s Are Here

By the end of January, the dread grows more intense as you must face the fact that tax season is upon you. Ads featuring Santa have given way to ads for tax preparation services. You have the forms in your hand. It’s time to consider when you might actually act.

2. Resentment of Others

It’s important not to gloss over the many feelings and experiences the Second Stage of Tax Preparation can encompass. Unfortunately, the Resentment of Others phase can begin as early as mid to late January, as a few insufferable friends begin to post on social media that they have completed their taxes. It’s as if getting their taxes done was as natural and easy, and possibly worth mentioning publicly, as painting the guest room. Now they’re finished with taxes for a whole year. Bastards.

The Resentment of Others Stage can hit freelancers especially hard, as they pass tables set up by nonprofit organizations in city train stations, offering free tax prep services to people with simple tax returns. This also extends to bitter ruminations on the price of tax prep software for people filing a simple W2 return, versus the cost of software for someone with his or her own business to contend with.

Finally, particularly for those who are mathematically challenged and who are dealing with the relatively complex scenario, Pennsylvanially and Philadelphially speaking, of being an independent contractor with multiple income streams and deductions, Resentment of Others can spill over into a deep sense of frustration and inadequacy that you cannot face preparing your taxes on your own, even with the help of software. You must fork a few hundred dollars over to your accountant to do it for you, while your savvier friends gain the financial savings and personal satisfaction of being able to toil over their own forms.

3. The Gathering

The Third Stage of Tax Preparation typically starts in earnest in early to mid March, when you actually get in touch with your accountant’s office. Once an appointment for tax preparation is scheduled, you embark on the Gathering Stage, which is a time-consuming and emotionally draining process for which you should allow at least two to three weeks.

Why the hell didn’t you pay any attention to that December notice from your student loan company about sending your W-9S, so that they could provide a 1098-E? Where is the business privilege license that you applied for last year? Receipts. Credit card statements. Interest you accrued and interest you paid.

Scanning your records to identify which clients are late in sending their 1099s, and requesting duplicate copies when everyone is flummoxed as to the forms’ whereabouts. Tracking down forms that USPS failed to forward from your former address. Dodging calls from that accountant who pissed you off last year when you needed help with a piece of paperwork for the mortgage.

4. The Chair

Whether you hire someone to do it for you, or you have the grit to do it yourself, eventually, the day will come, before the end of March (simply because you can’t stand drawing out the dread into April) when your butt hits that chair and your tax return is before you.

Since the survivors are often so rocked by the financial, intellectual, and emotional trauma of interfacing with the IRS, little data exists about emerging from Stage Four. For many of us, it’s a blur, and if it turns out that the U.S. government owes you some money instead of the other way around, you will experience one of the most acute and totally pathetic forms of gratitude known to mankind.

5. Serious Consideration of Going Off the Grid

Walking out of your accountant’s office, hitting that key to e-file, or dropping the envelope in the mail brings euphoric relief. But what about next year? The First Stage of Tax Preparation is just six months away. Rather than earning a living as a freelancer in the Philadelphia area for one more year, and then paying and filing taxes on that living, it would be much, much easier just to leave your house now, stop at the library for some books on foraging, and hike to North Dakota, where you’ll construct a shelter on the plains and live on potentially toxic berries and raw fish rather than face tax year 2015.