April 2023: Tax Returns & Systems
I know, I know. Lean in, university student with no life experience. In general, there are very few things I avoid doing more actively than paperwork, especially filling out forms and mailing them. But, money is a thing I'd like more of (or rather I'd like for stuff to require less of, I suppose) and where I live, doing your taxes as a uni student isn't insignificant, especially upon completion of a Bachelor's program.
The idea behind it is nice, but one has to very actively look for the option. There's a surprising number of things that can be compensated by the financial bureau. I don't currently have a lot of expenses, but I might think about getting some of that rent back I talked about here.
Tax Returns 2022
Doing tax returns retroactively is a little meh. I can probably get some rent (up to 1000€ annually) compensated, which is just as well, because I want to get back every cent I can for that, and I can also get back the semester fees (which come up to ~700€ annually). Beyond such trifles as my academic subscriptions and bank fees, which come up to a total below 50€ annually. I don't really buy a lot of books for my studies, and I haven't bought a new computer for a while now, so even though I could have those costs compensated, I don't think I'll make a habit of that. Similarly, I don't drive a car, so the cost of gas doesn't get compensated for me either. What might be interesting for the future however is that the costs of additional qualifications, i.e. language courses and such can be compensated.
Now, let's put this to the test. There is an online tool to create and send the tax returns form, which saves me the step of printing it and sending it off myself, which I tend to forget.
Registration for such things is always a drag. My country still loves using paper letters for such things, so it is effectively a multi-day process. It doesn't look too fun from here, honestly. I get why people hate filing their taxes, and why I didn't get to it for about 5 years. The platform is digital, which I suppose is a step up to the modus operandi of my country's bureaucratic mechanisms, but it doesn't really want to give you a comprehensive description of the formula you're filling out, and doesn't at all react to what you do. I don't know what the tax man thinks should be returned at this point, but we'll see in time. Might be 300, might be 1200. Who knows?
Plans for the future from here on are looking promising, as this year has been a little light on income, but I'm looking to pay more taxes (it sounds weird, I know). I'm not currently paying rent, but if I keep track of stuff like purchases of paper and pens, along with stuff that one could assume is used for studies, I can probably get back a not insignificant amount of money. Double spend it, so to say. The issue here is that keeping track of stuff over a year has historically not been my forte. Luckily for me, I think I remember a solution to problems like these.
The Work is the System
Whenever there's a lot of tedious busywork involved, the trick is not to be mindful of said busywork for a year - every year, but to have a system in place that does this busywork for you. In my case, this system will be two boxes.
I already tried doing something like this once, though at the time it was more for book-keeping purposes, but it had two chief issues:
1. It took up a lot of space
2. It was (relatively) expensive
I used to staple together my receipts. This quickly eats staples which aren't expensive per se, but it was a price that's not necessarily justified. For context: You keep your receipts, in case somebody asks. You just give your tax return form the price in the end, and that is best done on a weekly/bi-weekly basis. Addition of costs within a week is easy, and having a set time in a week where such costs are calculated and entered into a table is not too much of a hassle. That means I need at least two boxes: One for receipts already added into my calculation and one for just storage of the week. In the age of online shopping, there's no shortage for cardboard containers, so so far my plan looks like this.
All receipts go into a small box on my desk, where it's visible but not disruptive to my day to day. At the end of the week I add the prices in categories into a spreadsheet and empty my desk-box into a box under my desk that nobody but (and a cat) will pay attention to. At the end of the year I staple everything together and set it aside until I have my returns, at this point I can toss the whole thing. If anything asks, they get the whole thing and dealing with it becomes their job, at which point I'm going to be very satisfied, seeing as I've annoyed somebody at a government institution, which always kinda makes my day.
A very similar thing will need to happen with email, but I actually have a very similar system in place already. I don't use email very heavily, so treating the inbox like my desk box is plausible. I can open a folder for the running year and I already have one for fees.
Speaking of systems, I used my restructuring my weekly schedule and handling more stuff in the week as an opportunity to integrate some more tools into my day to day. I used to have a task planner on my phone, right up until it croaked and I lost the database for that (foreshadowing, foreshadowing) and I've wanted to get that back again, because it did something interesting to the way I work:
Seeing tasks in a list make me want to clear those items as soon as possible, so procrastination becomes productive strictly. Not everything will improve of course, it will make me do a lot of small, unimportant things, but considering how some days go, it'll be good to have a system in place that will make me do things. Speaking from experience, I tend to require a reward mechanism, the more detailed (and accurate) the better. I don't want to put too much time into creating tasks though, which is where my previous attempts have usually failed, so I'll try to reduce that to a statistics based system, that tracks tasks completed. As the days go on and I remember stuff I would like to do, I will hopefully fill this up.
Having a task system that I don't have to define also has two advantages that I haven't benefited from the last time I did this: I can quickly note down tasks without having to think about rewards, so small ideas I get while out and about can be noted down and only defined by when I want them to be done (if they need a deadline at all).
And finally, keeping regular waking hours - kinda. I have this habit particular to cave-dwelling introverts, that is destroying ones own sleep cycle the exact day one doesn't have to get up early the next day, which of course means that those nights with a following early morning are spent trying desperately to fall asleep, stifling performance on such appointments. Exams like being appointments of this sort. Keeping regular waking hours will need some getting used to, but hopefully I can get some physical exercise in before leaving for work/university, so intense concentration isn't the first thing I do in the morning, and I'll also be able to better gauge my productive output for the following days.
Great System Bonuses
You always want to shoot for a system that isn't disruptive for your everyday mode of operations, otherwise it'll feel like it's actively fighting you. I had this exact problem when I first tried my hand at book-keeping my personal finances. This might get me back on track, because this has actual rewards, and I'll be handling spreadsheets and receipts anyway. This first month of tracking has netted me one book I bought directly from a prof of mine, and postage. I guess there's just months where I don't buy a lot for uni or work. That's just how it goes.
On the task planner front, the first effects that are noticeable are of course that I do stuff that I otherwise forget, because I'm apparently too tired to think about what to do, but not too tired for an extended session of Vampire Survivors. A better solutions would probably be to just quit doing certain things and going to sleep instead, but old habits are hard to shake.
A short word on when to implement a system before I close out this month:
In general, it's always worth minimizing the number of running systems, especially if they are supposed to run separately. For me, implementing one is introducing a nagging instance that's easy to access, because whether or not a task is done is mostly dependent on whether or not it's started. I like checking items off lists, having a non-empty list somewhere is that nag, bridging the gap to outweigh the convenience barrier to start. I already had one such system in place in the form of this blog, but this is something driving me to create a product, which is not always the case for tasks that are cyclical or have a flexible due date. Those tasks are the ones that this new system is implemented to manage. This includes music practice, exercise, light reading, but also contacting people about stuff and paperwork. It has me planning better, but also in chunks of my commute, where information is coming out of my ears and reading or writing will have to be repeated, if I did it then. In short: it does end up saving me time and effort.