Shockingly, Metaphysical Poetry Didn't Prepare Me for Tax Season
I don’t often feel like my education failed me. I was very fortunate to attend good public schools in Kentucky, Virginia and New Hampshire (and I know that’s not the case everywhere). And when it was time for college, I was ready - and I loved it. And not just because the weekends were so much fun (not to mention 80’s night every Wednesday evening at Decibel). But because I really loved learning and going to class.
Except for those classes that were forced upon me by my liberal arts education. Some of my worst memories include:
Studying a foreign language (shameful admission: I actually failed Italian and had to drop out… turns out knowing the curse words does not help you on an exam)
Psychology (our professor taught a room of 150 students with her infant child strapped to her chest. True story: she was practicing attachment parenting and my GPA suffered for it)
Worst of all - Statistics. I’m confident that the professor passed me only because I was in her office every week for 16 weeks in a row really really trying (and really really crying).
What those classes taught me were valuable lessons (and it wasn’t the content on the exams). It was how to think, how to bounce back after failure, and how to navigate struggles - all of which are powerful tools to know as an entrepreneur. Unfortunately, they didn’t prepare me for what a 1099 is or why it’s important.
Now in my third year of business, I’m making enough money to qualify me for new things - like paying more taxes. So what happened this January was that literally everyone knew they needed to fill out a 1099 for their vendors/contractors - except me. It wasn’t until the first week of February where I asked a friend about it and they informed me the deadline was January 31.
Son of a…
I began scrambling and emailing my accountant with a lot of exclamation points in the subject line. My always-ahead-of-a-deadline self would now receive a fine for submitting my 1099s late and I had to have my books for-real-cleaned-up, versus me anecdotally saying, “Well, I know I paid her over $300 - does that help?”
I’m a smart woman, but the financial organization of my business is NOT my strong suit, and it needs to be. I firmly believe that marketing and sales are an important part of your business, but finance/accounting has to be next. I’m a rock star at one - and a self-proclaimed disaster in the other.
My undergraduate college, Miami University of Ohio, had one of the top business schools in the nation, and yet, I never stepped inside one of their buildings. While business majors were learning about tax laws and the IRS, I was analyzing John Donne and crafting soliloquies in the quad.
I’m not saying my college experience was better (cough: it was), but I do feel like there should have been a little more overlap. Clearly, I can still run a business: I just know my weaknesses. But I would have been better off if I learned basic things like there are more Tax deadlines outside of April 15.
We all benefit here. Because, let’s be honest, any number of accountants would be better off reading John Donne. He’s beautiful and complex and requires your brain to think in different ways - it’s like doing sit-ups, but for your cerebral cortex.
PS: If you read his work and your brain hurts, then welcome to my world. That’s how I feel every time I open QuickBooks.