It’s time to do my income taxes once again.

I don’t know about you, but I hate putting aside Web design or writing (or even just loafing!) to concentrate on credits and debits — even for a short period.

Must be the writer in me!

But tax preparation is a necessary nuisance — at least until somebody wises up and establishes a flat tax for everybody!

Late last year one of my friends showed me a software program that purports to help. You key in everything on a regular basis throughout the year, then when it’s time to visit your accountant (or do it yourself, if you’re into that), you print out a few pages and Voila! taxes done.

Simple, right?

Well, I bought the program, loaded it into the ‘puter, and fiddled with it a few times, but for the life of me, it just seems like going around your elbow to get to your thumb!

Now, maybe it was because I had a lot of other things on my plate at the time.

Maybe the “learning curve” was steeper than I anticipated.

Maybe it was just too cumbersome to enter a whole year’s worth of data at once.

That’s okay, I told myself. I’ll try again when the new year rolls around.

Here it is mid-February, and my data still isn’t entered.

And I want to be able to say, Voila!

So I’ll gather all my folders and notepads and receipts, separate them into a gazillion piles, add and re-add columns of numbers, and transfer everything to a single piece of paper for my accountant, just the way I always do.

It’s not pretty, but it works.

And I’m used to it.

And doggone it, I’d rather be doing something else anyway!