I Paid My Taxes And I Feel Nothing
Just do it.
I have had “pay my taxes???” scrawled in a frantic hand on my to-do list since February, when I filed my taxes with an accountant named Lee over Skype. He sent the forms to me via email; I signed them and promptly began my usual procrastination rituals. I didn’t pay them. I looked for the email every week in my inbox, compared the number to what was in my savings account and then closed the tab. I thought about paying them when I’d plunk down my debit card to buy other things, like perfume samples or groceries or pizza.
Reminded by our forthcoming Tax Series and the fact that it is improbably April already, I realized that if I kept putting this shit off, I’d forget about it completely. I woke up this morning, started some coffee and sat down at my computer to just do it.
The best time to pay your taxes is when you’re not really awake. You know you need to do it, and so you do, but it doesn’t register, like when someone calls early in the morning and you have an entire conversation with them about something vaguely important and forget about it immediately after.
I owe $1,946 to New York State and $5,7444 to the federal government. The money has been sitting in my bank account waiting to be thrown at this very occasion. There’s no real threat of me using the money for anything else; once I’ve set it aside and mentally earmarked it for my taxes, the thought of touching it makes me queasy. Paying a considerably large sum of money like that would normally make me feel very bad. The first year I freelanced full time, I paid around $7,000 in taxes one sunny afternoon and laid down on my floor amazed that I had the money to begin with.
This time, the money was there — a fact that I take an excessive amount of pride in, only because the version of myself in my head is much more fiscally irresponsible than my actual self. Anyway, I did it. I typed some numbers into a box and now it’s done. I didn’t feel relieved or nauseous or tired or anxious. I felt nothing! It’s fine.
Pay your taxes, then go get a pizza. Pay your taxes and then go get some ice cream. Pay your taxes and then take a walk around the block. Get a taco, pay your taxes. Doesn’t that feel better?
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