I don't know about you, but I had a year in which I worked for an american company as a de facto employee, but a de jure contractor. This meant that I withheld my own taxes, and would have to pay them when I submit my return. For the exact opposite reason (figuring that I could make time to to all the exchange rate lookups and calculations on my own, instead of bothering to hire an accountant), I ended up filing nearly 3 years late, and had to pay a whack of legal fees (there was a process a lawyer could enter into for me to get the penalties waived, and the interest reduced by 2%; this reduction was more than the cost of the lawyer). All said and done, I was out about an extrs $3.5k in late filing costs (and it would have been even worse if the CRA had asked about my failure to file before I'd gotten on it). Also a problem was that my system for managing my paperwork didn't scale particularly well, and I'd somehow structured my life so that it cost me $6 and took at least 1.5h evry time I wanted to access my paperwork during tax time (and yet I have a friend who insists that of all the people he knows, I have my bureaucratic shit together the best).
Just thought you'd appreciate a sincere answer to your rhetorical and mostly sarcastic question (and maybe some counter-neuroses that can turn you into a complete wreck who breaks down in utter panic at the prospect of filling out a form, rather than merely hiding from the forms in question) ;)
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Date: 2014-01-03 08:53 pm (UTC)I don't know about you, but I had a year in which I worked for an american company as a de facto employee, but a de jure contractor. This meant that I withheld my own taxes, and would have to pay them when I submit my return. For the exact opposite reason (figuring that I could make time to to all the exchange rate lookups and calculations on my own, instead of bothering to hire an accountant), I ended up filing nearly 3 years late, and had to pay a whack of legal fees (there was a process a lawyer could enter into for me to get the penalties waived, and the interest reduced by 2%; this reduction was more than the cost of the lawyer). All said and done, I was out about an extrs $3.5k in late filing costs (and it would have been even worse if the CRA had asked about my failure to file before I'd gotten on it). Also a problem was that my system for managing my paperwork didn't scale particularly well, and I'd somehow structured my life so that it cost me $6 and took at least 1.5h evry time I wanted to access my paperwork during tax time (and yet I have a friend who insists that of all the people he knows, I have my bureaucratic shit together the best).
Just thought you'd appreciate a sincere answer to your rhetorical and mostly sarcastic question (and maybe some counter-neuroses that can turn you into a complete wreck who breaks down in utter panic at the prospect of filling out a form, rather than merely hiding from the forms in question) ;)