MY NEW BUSINESS: INCOME TAX PREPARATIONS

By Tim Colin
So many people are concerned about making out their income taxes that I decided this week to start a little income tax preparation business on the side. I have absolutely no training at tax preparation and have never filed an income tax form. I’ve seen a lot of people advertise that they can do income taxes. My uncle Mike does income tax in his insurance office. He said he makes sure people buy an IRA from him when he makes out the taxes that way he greatly increases his profits.

I looked into selling IRA’s to my clients but it seems you need some sort of license. It seems like you have to have a license to do anything now days. I need a license to sell securities, a license to drive, a license to go fishing. As far as a fishing license is concerned I’ve been permanently banned from fishing in most of the mid-west.

And as far as Canada goes I am banned from even crossing the border for the next five years. I guess it has something to do with the Winter Olympic Games they recently held. It seems you just can’t go out and compete in the down hill skeet shoot without being sponsored by a country. I also found out that skeet were just round disks people shoot in the air. I thought “skeet” was just another name for “skeeters” which is what we call mosquitoes in Northern Michigan. I was shooting at every pine tree I passed hoping that I might just wing a few skeeters.

I kind of wondered before I strapped on my skies, why you would be shooting at mosquitoes in the middle of winter. But, I figured Canadian mosquitoes are a lot larger than the variety we have in Michigan so they must have enough blood stored up in them to survive a cold Canadian winter. In Michigan our mosquitoes hibernate in places like my parents screen door. That way when spring first comes and you‘re lying in your bed the mosquitoes are ready to buzz around your head.

Now getting back to my income tax business, it seems that a lot of people need help filling out the forms. I started out offering tax services for just $10.00. I got almost 40 people to come in and have me fill out their forms for them. Of course I only charged $10.00 for the first week because I’m just getting started so the first week of customers is sort of practice. Next week I’m going to look at filling in some deductions for people. This week I just gathered up the basic information and sent the forms into the IRS. Nobody this week will be getting any money back from the government. Of course just to make people happy I made sure that I entered a zero for “taxes owed”. The people that come in next week will be getting some deductions and money back since I’ve decided to charge $5.00 for every deduction I fill in on the forms. There are a lot of forms that deal with deductions so I hope to make my clients and more importantly myself, a lot of money.

Making a lot of money by filing tax forms for people should be really lucrative so there might be some question as to why I’m not filing any tax returns on my tax return business. In addition, I am a bit concerned that since I am new to this business, that some of the forms I fill out might not be filled out correctly. Therefore, to avoid any problems I decided to fill in the name “Abraham Lincoln” where the tax preparer is supposed to sign. I believe that no one would question the integrity of “Abraham Lincoln” and besides, he’s not just a former president but, he’s a lawyer so who would want to haul him in for an audit.