Another tax season is upon us. Charlie, who is an IRS-certified tax preparer, will be busy from now until April 15th.
She is passing the day-to-day work and responsibility of her bookkeeping business over to son Jonathan…that’s him on left with Charlie.
With every month, Jonathan is handling more and more of CMB, needing less supervision and hand-holding from Charlie. This allows her to focus on tax preparation, which she will continue to do even after she “retires” from bookkeeping.
My wife, who is a very gregarious and nurturing type, loves doing folks taxes, and finding various ways to minimize their tax burden. her clients are her little children; she takes good care of them.
She’s got at least fifty regular clients, all by referral, and it seems that every year one of them or more refers a friend or relative. So, Charlie will never be without tax clients.
This year everyone is waiting to see what Trump’s “tax reform” did for them (or, to them). So far, it seems that everyone is getting a bit of a return, so there’s some happiness among the clients.
(Unfortunately, Trump’s tax giveaway, which overwhelmingly favors the very-wealthy, was not matched by a reduction in Federal spending. Thus, the $ trillion feel-good gimmick, meant to prop up the Presidency, will be paid for by our children and grandchildren. It’s a totally irresponsible stunt by the GOP, but it enabled them to deliver the goods to the wealthy 1%…the folks who pay for their re-election campaigns. Shame on them!)
BTW, Charlie and I are getting a giant tax refund this year. It has nothing to do with Donald Trump (although he would claim credit if he knew about it!). What’s really happened is that Charlie’s net business income decreased somewhat in 2017, while her quarterly estimated tax payments to the I.R.S. (which were based upon a projected increase in income) ramped up from 2016. So, we overpaid our tax massively, and Uncle Donald owes us a wad. Yeah, Baby!!
The extra money will come in handy because…
…we will be putting our home up for sale after tax season, right about the time we ship out on our 2018 RV Road Trip. Our oldest son, Tim, will be selling the house for us. He’s a Realtor…that’s him on the left.
Tim sold my Mom’s place last year for the family Trust. He’s pretty good at real estate.
(We think it would be a good idea to sell the house before the economy tanks. The Dow Jones index dropped another 1,000 points this morning. Mr. Bragger-in-Chief has been uncharacteristically mute today; up until now, he has chosen to use the Dow Jones index as the measuring stick of his Presidency.)
Charlie, Tim and I did a walk-thru last week to see what, if anything, needed to be done to make it “Open House”-ready. In Tim’s opinion, nothing substantial required…just take down a lot of the personal items, do a little touch-up painting, clean it nice, and…let the fun begin.
We have an unusual property. We sit up high, looking down on other homes nearby. We have a nice wrap-around walk in the back, connecting two patios, both of which get nice shade in the Summer, which is critical here. Most of the properties nearby don’t have such a feature, certainly not as nice as ours. We also have the largest and best floor plan of similar homes in our neighborhood. Our landscaping is very nice…lots of custom stuff…Charlie keeps it beautiful. And, we have nicely decorated our house: lots of art, nice doodads, flowers, etc. When a buyer walks in our front door, he/she is looking down into our living room (which has a 20′ ceiling) and out some very large windows to the tree-shaded back patio. Very impressive…it’s what sold us the minute we saw it twenty years ago.
Well, it’s not that impressive, but it’s our “castle”, and we’re pretty proud of it.
Who knows what we can get for our house, but Tim will price it right and it will sell, I’m sure. We’re committed to leaving, so it will be done. Hopefully, we will get a buyer by the end of May. All we need is one “sucker” (HaHa).
By then, we will have scoped-out Las Vegas and will have decided on neighborhoods that would interest us. Hopefully, we will hook up with a local Realtor who can be on the lookout for properties that meet our specs: 1,200 to 1,600 s.f.; single-story; nice backyard surrounded by cinder block walls; no pool; and, no H.O.A. We’re officially done with condo living. Max cost = about $300,000. There are hundreds of these homes in Las Vegas; we only need one.
Until then, I’ve got my eye on this fixer upper.
We’ll probably set aside $50K for remodeling. That way, Charlie can get it exactly the way she wants it. A happy wife means a happy life…right?