Paper’s revenge

So, it was mid mid-2006 that we began the paperless project, an attempt to control the blizzard of paper that confounds daily life. I did this in part because I knew, I just knew that some day, the IRS would require me to provide my receipts for deductibles.

We have had a small side business as a freelance photographer, in conjunction with wordsmith spouse, Linda. In the early days we pitched stories to newspapers and magazines, and my photos went off to agencies (Gamma/Liaison, Picture Group, Saba, Corbis) and we made some reasonably serious bucks – indeed, at one point I was ready to quit my day job at a daily newspaper and go full time freelance, so lucrative had that practice become. (Pre-crash of Old Media, natch).

Not a fan of playing chicken with the IRS, I have meticulously saved receipts, and logged the day’s events (formerly in moleskine notebooks, now on my weblog). There is a Manilla folder for every year, and a letter-size envelope for each trip’s receipts. We were even good about logging working and non-working days when we were in places like Paris. Easiest to be honest, right?

So, when, after nearly 30 years of no beef from the IRS (we made money, we paid taxes, after all) we got a request from the IRS for 2006 travel and entertainment receipts, we were ready!

Ready, at least, until we went to the garage to get the paper receipts (from June 2006 on, most of our receipts were also scanned to PDF: before that, it’s all Manilla folders). Lo and behold, we discover there is a gap in those file storage boxes (the ones you keep buying when your file cabinet gets full). Records for 2003 to 2006 are just nowhere to be found (and, boy, have we turned the joint upside down, best as a hemiplegiac man can).

True, we had everything moved out of the office late last year (aka gulker.com World HQ) while the floor was being repaired (and we took the opportunity to repaint while everything was out). True, a local mover boxed up everything but missed the main ‘live’ file cabinet. True, we also took the opportunity to recycle a truckload of accumulated cruft.

So, of course, we had no idea this stuff wasn’t there when we proudly went to collect our neatly-archived business receipts (and now have no idea where they may have gone). Had the IRS asked for any year between 1997 and 2008 (except for 2003-2006) we’d have just faxed them the stuff. As it is, I’ve been spending endless hours getting credit card and bank receipts and trying to recreate a year that’s hazier than most – I received the glioma diagnosis in 2006…