I have missed a few 5 minute blogs but here is a quickie (not the kind we were talking about Sunday)… So last night I had a romantic night with Uncle Sam. So my tax situation seemingly gets more complicated every year and this year was the worst yet. Two jobs, Self-Employed Income and Expenses, Rental Property, Investment Interest, Charitable Contributions, etc. If this wasn’t enough I have to throw in the word Clergy. Turbo Tax was quite helpful with all but the last part. 

I first tried the online package where they evaluate just how advanced of a program you need. Well after hitting the clergy wall and the help answers being more complicated than the questions I decided to download the Home Business Edition. They listed a bunch of the stuff that I needed.  I went pretty gracefully through all of it, until I got to the Self-Employed Clergy stuff. A majority of my income was actually expense reimbursement but Turbo Tax is just not equipped to efficiently help us men/women of the cloth. I know that a majority of the pastors who read this just said no duh! 

So after working through some worksheets on the IRS site and working directly in the Turbo Tax forms I think I got it all wrapped up at 4:00am. The problem was I got in a zone and was afraid to stop because I knew all my thoughts would turn into a pumpkin muffin at dawn.   So word to the wiser than me, there is no TURBO in Taxes for clergy. Hindsight is always 20/20 but I just didn’t feel like I had enough time to sit down with a tax guy or girl because I have found that a majority of them don’t know how to deal with pastoral salaries either. That and I don’t know any that would have helped me at 9:00 pm when I started. I will say that I am happy about the record keeping practices that the Executive Pastor at my old church taught me. He is also a CPA and probably would have helped a brother out but going to Orlando wasn’t exactly in the schedule either.  I am excited to say that I am getting back a little something that I let Sammy borrow from me. One question though…How come I have to give him interest when I am late but he doesn’t?