Feeling brain dead

The Pierini DIET - click here to learn more

In most people’s world there are four seasons – spring, summer, autumn and winter. In my world, there’s a fifth season called “tax season” and it’s about to begin. It slowly begins at the start of a new year and lasts, during its most brutal period, until April 15th.

If you can imagine a blistering heat wave, it’s tax season for someone who does what I do, but if you can imagine the most pleasant year-round weather, for me, it’s the rest of the year.

Monday and Tuesday I prepared for tax season by attending daylong continuing professional education seminars that focused on tax law changes that will have an impact on the individual, partnership, corporation, trust and tax-exempt organization tax returns I’ll prepare this year. Each seminar was a brain drain session of trying to absorb everything new under the sun. It’s like that every year.

Despite frequent attempts by Congress to simplify the federal tax law, it’s the most complicated it has ever been in my three-decade career. In my opinion, this complexity growth began with President Ronald Reagan’s Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981 at the infancy of my career.

The prospects for simplification, in my opinion, are about as great as eliminating federal government deficit spending. It ain’t going to happen thanks to lobbyists that take care of you, me and every other “special interest” under the sun.

So tax season is all about me working like a mad man while trying to squeeze in “something is better than nothing” workouts, and doing the best I can to keep everyone happy who demands that I do so. I poke along each day doing the best I can while some days looking like a zombie and feeling brain dead.

Pax Domini sit semper vobiscum