Taxes, money and paper

Can I just express how ridiculous I feel that our current US tax code is? Can anyone simply figure out what a tax basis is on investments made through a company stock purchase program employing dollar cost averaging and discounted purchases? I consider myself a reasonably intelligent person but after trying to retrieve my "corrected" 1099-DIV and 1099B forms from the very incompetent *%^#$ Investor Services for over a month, the idea of trying to figure out the stock basis on a total payout of $156 is just not worth the effort! I spend 45 minutes this morning reading tax code on the IRS website. Isn't the proces of paying taxes supposed to be easily understood by the everyman? No wonder there are so many business and accountants making money off of doing other people's taxes. I guess I'll have to wait until Monday to call Mellon and request their assistance. Another few days we have to wait to get our tax refund.

So I am practically chest deep in paper this morning. W is out on a (very cold) bike ride that may last in indeterminable amount of time. I decided therefore to tackle my paper collection stage of the GTD process. I'm surrounded by manila folders, items I need to decide whether they will take two minutes or less to finish, reference items that need to be filed, and an open Palm Pilot for writing down my task items and someday / maybe lists. This could get dangerous by the time W arrives home. I may have 200+ manila folders all over the floor by that point (or possibly a bonfire in the backyard.)

Remember when you were a kid and thought that the coolest thing in the world was going to the mailbox and seeing a piece of mail addressed to you? I used to wish that I would get 'official looking' mail. OK, I was a wierd kid...I had a Franklin Day Planner in 6th grade. But now, I wish the mail would STOP coming. We only use one credit card a piece, have four total magazine subscriptions (Time, Cooking Light, and Golf Digest) and work with a limited number of investment companies, yet somehow we receive a seemingly huge amount of mail. It just ends up stacking up and feeling like a huge mental burden after awhile. Maybe this GTD process will help make it easier to tackle and a little less of a burden. One can only hope....