Do you want fries with that?

If anyone ever tries to tell you it's a good idea to start a business... run. Very fast and very far away from that person. Because I can tell you that they are nuts.

This is now my third year doing taxes as a self employed person. For the first two years, I had a home daycare. Well, truthfully I only did it for about a year, but it was from summer '05 to summer '06, so that makes for two tax years. I have always done my own taxes. Wait, no, that's a lie. My mom used to do them for me. Then I decided to be a big girl and let Turbo Tax do them for me. Last year, however, Turbo Tax would NOT work for me because I was doing home daycare stuff AND new home stuff and my gosh that was the most confusing thing I've ever done in my entire life because for part of the year we lived in an apartment and the other part we lived in our house. So not only did I have to figure up all the tax stuff that goes along with buying a home, I also had to figure out how to divide it between personal and business because with a home daycare, you can take a lot of deductions that you normally couldn't... such as a portion of your rent, utilities, etc etc etc even if you do not have a dedicated space in your home solely for the business based on the percentage of the year you were in operation and blah blah blah blah. Turbo Tax was dumb and would not do something right; I do not remember what. So I did them by hand. I spent a lot of time on the phone with the IRS (who, surprisingly, were very kind and helpful). I wanted to die.

However, all of that pales in comparison to THIS year, as I am figuring tax stuff on a new business that started in 2007 and has thousands of little teeeeeny tiny inventory items. *faint* Do you know how FUN it is to count 2mm beads? Yeah, well, it's so NOT. Not to mention that I did not keep impeccable records in 2007, so I'm spending days... yes DAYS... figuring things out. Literally. This is the first real break I've taken all week. I bought myself some fun new jewelry stuff as a reward. Shhhh. Don't tell. But I can't wait to play with it. It's metal clay. So, like, you know, CLAY... but METAL. And you form it and then burn the heck out of it and it turns into solid silver (which is 99.9% pure as opposed to sterling which is only 92.5% pure, and as such the "fine" 99.9% pure silver does not tarnish hardly at all and is super easy to clean). Doesn't that sound FUN?! Metal CLAY. I mean, can you say genius?

But back to the taxes. I do not pay myself enough to make up for all this time I'm having to spend putting all this stuff together. So if you suddenly see my prices jump up to, say, $1,000 per earring, you'll know why. Just chill. I gotta pay for my metal clay somehow, you know, and that stuff is 'spensive, people.

Life was so much easier as an employee. Thank goodness I have a super smart mom who has done self employed taxes for years and a genius husband with some accounting background or I swear, I'd jump off a cliff. I might anyway though, but if I go, I'm taking my metal clay with me.

Don't worry. Come May, I'll probably be the happy go lucky jewelry business owner again. But until then, I'd kinda almost rather flip burgers. It's a lot easier, that's for sure.

Not that I'm complaining... much.