The Things You Learn From Preparing Your Income Tax Return...

in taxes •  3 years ago 

For the past 8-10 days I've been working on doing our 2021 income tax return.

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Vibrant orange nasturtiums in our garden, last summer

That might sound like a lot of time for a tax return, but the reason it takes so long is because I also have to do the bookkeeping for the four very small businesses that make up the bulk of how we make our living.

This post, however, is not intended as a complaint about taxes so much as an observation on what you learn by taking the time to actually crunch the numbers on your alleged livelihood.

In this case, crunching the numbers was an exercise in discovering just how much the last couple of years have caused our business to shrink.

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Wildflowers in our garden

Both my wife and I have creative type ventures that we used earn a fair sideline income from… that has pretty much been decimated to near zero because we materially depend on being able to go to arts and crafts fairs, music festivals, and other kinds of outside events as vendors... all of which have been canceled for two years.

Online sales is just not the same because a number of these products we make and sell really have to be seen in person.

Meanwhile my old postage stamp and manuscript business hasn't been doing too well, in large part be because people are feeling increasingly uncertain about their financial situations, and so they're less likely to spend money on non-essential hobbies like stamp collecting... in spite of having more time to pursue them.

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Squash blossoms in our garden, last summer

On a brighter note, my work as a book editor is about the only part of our business cluster that has been doing OK, in large part because more people have been trapped at home and so they have finally been trying to write those books that they've had on their mind for the past 20 years… and quite a few have completed their manuscripts.

But that's still not enough to offset the losses in other places.

Meanwhile, it looks like inflation (at least here in the US) is ramping up and there really isn't much I can say about that that's positive.

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Lavender and salvia

I suppose the only thing we can hope for is that our aspiring ventures as "crypto bloggers" will be able to continue out into the future and provide at least a meager sideline income stream!

To that end, it's very cool to see Blurt doing as well as it has been... being one of the few tokens out there that's actually holding the value it had at the turn of the year!

In the meantime, I hope you're having a good weekend; thanks for stopping by and have a wonderful Sunday!

DO leave me a comment — engagement matters! Communities are built because people INTERACT with each other through the content that's created! So share your opinion, be part of the conversation! I do my best to answer all worthy comments!

Sequence: 044 — Timestamp: 2022.02.12 - 20:02 PST

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Hi, @denmarkguy,

Thank you for your contribution to the Blurt ecosystem.


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  ·  3 years ago  ·  

Thanks for your support, I appreciate it!


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  ·  3 years ago  ·  

so amazing the flowers you share @denmarkguy, i really like lavender.

  ·  3 years ago  ·  

Thank you for your kind words!


Posted from https://blurt.live