Struggling with taxes. I worry about making mistakes, cheating, committing tax fraud. Trying to just get it done and submitted. So many details I could get stuck on. Pushing onward feels like ripping off a bandaid. I survive it every year, so I’ll probably get through it this year, too. Lol. Imma hafta to treat myself to some chocolate after this.

Have you been audited or spent time incarcerated for tax fraud in the past?

@Fear Strikes Out Thanks! No, I haven’t. I own a sole proprietorship, tho, so it’s a little complicated. I really should hire an accountant one of these days, but I’m cheap and have been sticking with TurboTax the past several years.

@Alyosha I’m really not afraid of going to jail. I just don’t want to be a bad or irresponsible person.

@Alyosha Does making mistakes on your taxes make you the same bad person as someone who knowingly cheats on their taxes? You seem like you might be a bit self-judgemental and in a harsh way. If a friend made an unintended mistake on their taxes (say, transposed some numbers that resulted in a higher refund), how would feel about them from a moral perspective?

@Fear Strikes Out I wouldn’t feel like they were a worse person. My brain is telling me that if I don’t re-recheck everything and re-crunch the numbers, then I’m not doing my due diligence. I think I’ll close it up for tonight. Set a timer for an hour tomorrow. Go through it one more time. File & pay and wash my hands of it. As it turns out, it says I owe a small penalty...and I don’t think I should, which means I made a mistake. I don’t mind paying the tiny penalty, but the perfectionist in me is upset that there’s been a mistake somewhere and I don’t know where. Thanks sharing input. It’s nice not to have company in this process!

@Alyosha Uh. Speaking of mistakes & typos—I mean it’s nice to have company. Sorry lol

@Alyosha LOL! I have traditionally been a huge re-checker, so I understand. I pretty much put my faith in Turbo Tax for accuracy, check the returns (my wife and I file married by separate returns) and then let it go electronically. That has been a recent phenomenon, just in the last few years. I had to re-train my brain to accept uncertainty. Lots of years of re-reading, re-writing, checking for mistakes ad nauseam. It's been a very liberating experience and I have yet to experience any negative consequences. Practice making mistakes in areas that you do not feel are high risk and then gradually work your way up the risk ladder. All the best!

@Fear Strikes Out Thank you so much for sharing your experience!

@Fear Strikes Out The taxes are FILED. Thanks for the encouragement.

@Alyosha Yay!! ? Now you can spend some quality time with your BF later today (Tuesday) with that stress behind you.

@Alyosha Same, we use Turbo Tax, and I should probably just hire someone, ugh

@Alyosha I panic if we get a refund, like I should be owing at the end, because getting a refund means I’m bad or didn’t do them write and it means I will get audited. My brain is so muddled.

@phoenix76 Yeah...I always overreport income and underreport expenses...

@Alyosha I used to report interest income below the threshold amount required for issuing the 1099-INT form which used to be about $5.00.

@Alyosha Yup, I under report expenses so that I do owe. It sounds insane

(thinking I might've plagiarised ugh)

@Scoggy I was hypervigilant about that too back in my college days. It was definitely a compulsion in retrospect.

@Fear Strikes Out It's actually so rough, I end up procrasting a lot on actually doing them because it's so stressful, then I end up submitting something so substandard. There's a real lack of trust in myself, I'll literally write something and wonder if I read it somewhere else and I'm just regurgitating it and it's going to get flagged, PLUS horrible guilt that at some point in writing I've actually plagiarised on purpose and I'll construct an idea of what might've happened (that I was relaxed and thought I'd just take a risk and go ahead and do it and not think about it much in order to avoid remembering it and feeling guilty in the future). That last one makes it difficult to even feel willing to quit the mental compulsions, from a fear that if I'm relaxed while I'm working, that'll lead to me plagiarising. I mean, we've all cheated on spelling tests when we were little and also been dishonest in our lives but I have this feeling that I must be "that kind of person", it's the same across a bunch of different themes I've had. What a headache.

@Scoggy Have you ever had ERP from a therapist? It's what change my world because all of this is rooted in the fear of uncertainty.

@Fear Strikes Out I do have a therapist now, we are doing combined EMDR and ERP for PTSD and OCD and she's really good. I think it's something where we need to look at core fears I guess and do exposures for those so that anything along these lines doesn't trigger me. I've made good progress already with some themes and I've even gotten over one in the past pre-therapy completely by myself (doing ERP without realising that's what I was doing) so I do have confidence that I can deal with this one too. It just makes me nervous still as I know how unpleasant it's been and I've been off school since before therapy so I haven't really had the opportunity to do ERP for it.

@Scoggy That's good to hear that you have a competent therapist. Because school is so important to you, that will be one area that will really test your ability to accept uncertainty. But, I assure you, that if you can successfully master significantly reducing the compulsions surrounding school that your life in school and in general will be so much more fulfilling. You are currently imprisoned by OCD even though you have made progress in some areas of your life. That success should give you a bit of a boost that you can, in fact, accept uncertainty in areas that hold great importance to you and hit at a core fear.

@Fear Strikes Out Thank you :) I'm definitely looking to start facing ALL of my fears regarding having a proper career. It ends up all coming down to the idea that it could be taken away from me, and that actually doing it and engaging with life could itself lead to other fears coming true, so that I might regret ever pursuing my dreams. But I'm coming to the conclusion that a life not lived isn't really worth living. If it all goes wrong, at least I'll know that I didn't just take the easiest paths out of fear, I could have my integrity that way even if I ended up with not much else. I can't live my life dictated by my fears and anxieties and hating myself for it, I have to try.

@Scoggy Well said! ?

They shouldn't even be so complicated, but I digress. ☺

Focus on the statement above where you sign that states something like "to the best of my belief and knowledge." Of course, OCD can manage to distort that in one's mind too sometimes.