Data Points
Tax season is uniformly dreaded by everyone except, of course, tax preparers. Having spent some time compiling documents and uploading them to the CPA’s secure site this weekend, I finally had to sit down and do mileage as well as look at expenses.
Over the years of running my own law practice, calculating the annual mileage has been the biggest consumption of time. This year brought new challenges with mileage, new columns added to explain what I thought was a deduction that was outside the law practice. Using Excel in a rudimentary manner, I ended up with multiple columns for mileage. And then I moved on to expenses, because I had been in grad school and transitioned to doing some clinical work as well as working to get an interim license, even more columns.
As I combed through bank statements and calendars, the stresses of the year bubbled up. After about 6 hours of working on this off and on, my body buzzed, and my mind could not focus anymore; overwhelm set in.
Mileage and expenses constitute data points for those who prepare taxes. Going back through all of the experiences 2025 took me through the emotional layers that had been stuffed down or ignored.
If you’re still delaying gathering and digesting those data points for your taxes, know that you’re not alone. A simple task, data gathering, lies in wait with an overlay of memories and experiences left unaddressed. Give yourself some grace and take your time. Yet there’s no substitute for getting started, slowly.
In years past, I gathered the documents and dumped them on the CPA. This year, due to the complexity, I worked to sort through the expenses, the mileage, and the multiple tracks of life. Certainly, these are data points for someone, but for me, it was a journey.
Maybe January and February should really be our time to review what happened in the year that’s passed. As Winter works its magic, should we be spending our time looking at what was and thinking about what will be? For me, this includes a resolution to do this monthly. Perhaps that’s learning new discipline or a resolution that might be kept or not.
The onerous work of tax season this year offered new insight. Spending time with the data includes shedding the emotional weight of 2025 while also addressing the bureaucratic machinations with numerical data points.