January...bleh

I realized today that I haven't blogged in almost a month!  Yikes!  How fast time flies - if only I were having fun.  Unfortunately for me, and many of my fellow CPAs, January is not typically the highlight of my year.  It's not that January is the busiest time of year, rather it's the general mood that arrives in the office knowing that busy season is just around the corner.   

"Busy season" or "tax season" has a very finite end, April 15th; however, the beginning of busy season is really dependent on your clients.  Some clients get their information to you really quickly meaning your busy season starts sooner, others are really late, meaning a shorter but more deadly busy season.  

I suppose I should be grateful that my busy season is generally pretty steady - a consistent 55-70 hour work week.  But sometimes I wish I could just work 100 hours a week for 2 or 3 weeks then be done with it.  Why drag it out?!  

Back to the point...there's no official beginning of tax season; rather, people just start staying gradually later, but you're never sure if they're staying later so that people think they're busy or if they're staying late because they really have work to do.  The funny thing about busy season is that even if all of your work is done, you don't want to be the one leaving first because then people think you're not busy enough and give you more work!  So starting in January, all tax accountants start trying to appear busy until they really are busy just so that no one who is actually busy in January ask them to help thus accelerating their own busy season...make sense?  Don't worry, I think it's ridiculous too!

So, that's my really lame excuse for the lack of posts lately.  Only, I'm the one who really is busy instead of the one who's pretending to be busy...so if you're just pretending to be busy, watch out!  I might just make you help me with my workload!