I just counted and I am heading into my 9th tax season (or busy season, as they/we refer to it in the biz). It makes me feel old. Although, when I think about it, it's really not that big a number. It's just that the preparation methods and procedures have changed so drastically since I started. I feel like an old dog and I don't want to learn any new tricks, thank-you-very-much. I wish technology would just leave the profession well enough alone and go pick on someone else. It makes me wonder how the guys that have been doing this 20, 30 and 40 years feel. Yikes.
I know my resistance to the change is because I'm a highly hands-on kind of girl. I like feeling the papers, sorting the papers, putting them in order, making my marks on them. But no more. Now it's all paperless. (Although, for the record, I think we use almost as much as before.) Scanned documents, pdf files, software that scans documents and puts the information in the return all by itself. The only problem is that it can't do it right and never will. There are always mistakes. So, rather than preparing taxes I'm babysitting a software package - just following it around and cleaning up its messes. How is that making things any more efficient or effective? Plus, it feels like all the processes take so much stinkin' longer than they used to that what we save in paper (or whatever) is eaten up just as quickly by what we lose in time. Maybe. Who knows. All I know is that it feels cumbersome. It feels disconnected and remote and I don't like it.
