Tax time here in the US is just around the corner and you are either excited to be expecting (or have already received) a refund, stressed about paying or perhaps you are ignoring it altogether.
You can e-mail into [email protected] to let me know which category you are in and I’ll hit you back with some guidance specific to your situation.
My personal tax story is instructive for you, no matter which category you fall into.
I’ll be sharing some details over right here, so keep an eye out for my tax time insights. Most importantly, I’ll be sharing the story of how I ended up with an unexpected $100,000 tax bill and how I handled it. Plus, what I did after I was audited that built me a $1,000,000+ business. Seriously, this is huge and applies in many areas of your life.
Today though, I want to share some tax time tips that could help you immediately:
- Tax time can be a wake up call to approach your finances with eyes wide open: see it that way and grow your income in alignment with your life.
Looking at the numbers of my life and business was terrifying for years. Rather than paying attention (which felt either obsessive or overwhelming), I decided I would just make more money so I didn’t have to really pay attention.
That’s one strategy I see a lot of entrepreneurs who are scared of their numbers using and while it can work for a while, it will ultimately backfire on you and result in extremely costly mistakes, as it did for me.
The other option I see people using is to just ignore tax time altogether by making so little that filing taxes isn’t necessary.
Either of these options is not in alignment with the truth of who you are. Making so little that filing taxes isn’t necessary or making so much that you think you can just pay in advance for your mistakes are both avoidance strategies that take you away from the truth.
Face your taxes with eyes wide open, with regular monthly meetings with your bookkeeper (or yourself if you don’t have a bookkeeper yet), reconcile your books, categorize your expenses properly each month, and review your profit and loss — those are recipes for success.
If you don’t know how to do these things, hit reply and let us know. If there’s enough interest we’ll create a training.
There was a time I didn’t know how to do these things, so I just avoided it.
Today, I have clean and clear systems to manage my financials that allow me to look clearly, use my numbers to tell the story of my business so I can make wise decisions and I can relax knowing I’m earning what I need, when I need it, on demand and there’s no tax time scrambling anymore.
- Use your refund wisely to invest in resources that create more in the world.
The other day, I supported one of my on-site team members to get his taxes done. He was going to go to H&R Block and they told him it would cost him $100 to do his taxes plus he would owe $300+ (because he is a 1099 independent contractor with us and that means he has to pay all of the taxes himself on his income).
I used Turbo Tax and deducted some of his expenses for him. We ended up getting him a $300+ refund from the taxes he paid via his W-2 job.
So I asked him, how are you going to use this money?
He told me he was going to buy parts for his car so he could make it even more tricked out.
A part of me cried inside. That’s consumerism at it’s finest.
Investing in tricking out his car isn’t going to create more of anything in his life or the world.
Instead, he could be using the money to invest in gaining a new skill that he will be able to use in service to creating more in the world.
I invite you right now to consider where you might be using your resources to consume more rather than to create more and what you can do to shift that with your very next investment, especially your tax time refund, if you are getting one.
- Don’t beat yourself up, rather commit to make changes and learn, grow and evolve.
Remember, we learn by making mistakes. Every challenge (including the challenge of managing the financials of your life with your eyes wide open) is your greatest opportunity to be more of who you really are. And you get to choose that in each moment.
Don’t beat yourself up. Trust that you are being shown exactly what you need to learn next. Our purpose here at Eyes Wide Open is to lovingly support you to see what you may have been missing up until now.
I hope these tax time tips have showed you how you can use even the most practical of life experiences to expand your consciousness and live your life awake, aware and on your terms.
With eyes and heart wide open,
Ali
PS — We started our Enough Course yesterday, April 6th. Everyone who attended had huge ah-ha’s and breakthroughs on their own awareness of what they have and what they actually need to have the life they really want. It’s not too late to join us for the rest of the sessions. If you would like to consider whether it’s right for you, send us a note ([email protected]) and let us know so we can send you a recording of the first session and you can check it out and see if it’s your right next step.
In September of that year, things started to fall apart.
