Tax Day

April 15^th. The dreaded Tax Day. Possibly you’re among many tax-paying Americans who don’t dread the deadline to file your Income Tax forms. You’re done, and your tax return is in the mail.  If so, then congratulations.

However, for many adults with ADHD, filing tax forms often brings a sense of guilt or gnaw of defense and plethora of excuses as to why the forms are not ready to mail by midnight. On the other hand, the same adult can take heart.  You can easily overcome tax quandaries this year and can be ready for next year’s tax season.

If you’re not ready to file you tax forms this year, quickly expend the time and effort to consult a tax preparation specialist, and learn how you can file for an extension. If you have the forms, but not the money you need to pay, talk to the tax specialist on how you can file now and pay later.

Keep the promise to yourself that you will be ready earlier next year to get your tax forms done on time. Orderly record keeping may not be the most interesting project for you to carry out, but it can be done. When tax time rolls over us, it's important to have a head start on the process of filing.

Whatever it might be, your personal system for organization can serve you well in your record keeping. Possibly for you, it is a simple matter of a large paper grocery bag. I’m not kidding; I saw it work well for a late friend. She was a professional, and she made a super income. She just did not like to take on the challenge of sorting papers related to income tax. The current year’s brown sack sat on the corner of her desk.

Any paper, bill, receipt she thought might be related to taxes went into the sack. “I take it to my tax lady and let her sort out the important ones,” she told me when I laughed at her system. “That’s what I pay her to do.”  It worked. No guess work as to what the tax preparation specialist might need.

Other persons find that they do well with color-coded files, and they make them simple in case another member of the family may need to get to the information. Pick a color that matches your concept of what goes in the file. For example, red is often associated with medical expenses. Yellow is matched with contributions and charity donations. Whichever color you use, it must remind you of the content. Keep these files in a crate or desk drawer that you will see each month. Whenever a tax record comes across your desk that month, file it immediately in the correct file folder. Other persons use open small baskets or containers of different colors. Open baskets allow for a quick toss when sorting important pieces of information.

Of course, you need an incentive for filing those papers each month, so think how you might reward yourself when you do. Undeniably, you are bribing yourself to do something that needs to be done anyway, but persons with ADHD often focus better on any task when there is have a reward or reason for doing so. I expect you will know exactly what works well as an incentive for you.