The Ritual of Tax Season

Take the stress out of tax season! As a former tax preparer for 8 years, Lauren shares powerful insights on how to transform your relationship with taxes from one of dread to empowerment.

In this episode...

🔥 Why tax avoidance creates a "concrete ceiling" that limits your income potential 

✨ The perfect timing for gathering your tax documents (and why earlier is always better) 

💸 Why working with a tax preparer is worth every penny (even if you're DIY-minded) 

💫 How to reframe tax season as a powerful business review ritual 

🧠 Practical ways to stay relaxed during tax season (key for maintaining an open abundance channel) 

🪄 The "pay to play" mindset shift that helps you make MORE money by embracing taxes

Whether you're already on top of your taxes or still in avoidance mode, this episode offers a refreshing perspective that bridges practical advice with energetic principles to help you navigate tax season with confidence, clarity, and ease.

🎙️ Brought to you by Lauren Poppins Raye

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Connect with Lauren on Instagram: @laurenpoppinsraye

Transcript

0:58

At the time this episode is airing, we are halfway through tax season for tax year 2024. So this feels like the perfect time to touch down and drop in around the important things to keep in mind to be in alignment during this time of year versus what is much more common. And. I'm going to go into the what, the why, the how, so many important pieces that I feel qualified to impart to you as somebody that was a tax preparer for eight years and worked closely and firsthand with so many business owners that ended up transforming their relationship with their taxes through their work with me. And this is something that I still feel so passionate about offering even though I am no longer a tax preparer, which by the way, if you are listening to this and you need tax support, I do have an excellent referral. So definitely reach out if that's you. But regardless, I have some tips to offer you to make tax season not only a time that you don't dread, but actually look forward to and navigate and move through in a way that feels really empowering. And I want to say first thing before I even dive into unpacking all of this is that this will be my third tax return on the other side of things not as a tax preparer as somebody that just like you and everybody else is tasked when this time of year rolls around with getting all of my numbers together, getting all of my documents together and handing it over to my tax preparer. So although I'm speaking to you from a position of expertise, having been a tax preparer for so long, I'm also speaking to you in a relative way in the trenches as somebody that now navigates tax season just like you do. And so these things that I'm going to speak about are actually coming from both sides of the fence, knowing that they are absolutely valuable and important from both perspectives, the tax preparer and the tax filer working with one. Okay, the first thing I want to speak to is around the avoidance piece, which one is all too common, two is something that I have now experienced as a filer. When I was a tax preparer, I often waited till the end anyway to do my own taxes because I was so busy with client returns, so I wouldn't have called it avoidance then because it was just a strategy decision around prioritizing my clients in their time of need. However, I absolutely experience that now. Not ultimately, I would say. Even as of the recording of this episode, February is not over and I did get everything over to my tax preparer a couple of days ago. So I'm definitely ahead of the curve as far as that goes, but I felt the dread and the wanting to put it off because it just felt so big. And this is even from someone that keeps good records, but even so I needed to go get my profit and loss statement ready, go through and make some little adjustments, realizing things that were missed and not accounted for, various little things like figuring out my mileage, calling my car lender and finding out the interest that I paid on my loan in the last year, logging in to my utility accounts to see and add up the amounts that I paid for my electricity and propane for my home office deduction. Having to figure out the missing amounts on my Coinbase gain and loss report for my crypto. Anyway, you get the idea. A bunch of little things that I needed to do to get everything together, even as someone that keeps great records. There's stuff that we have to track down. So I felt the power of the heaviness of that avoidance leading up to it. And then eventually just decided one day there were other things that I would so much rather have worked on or that I felt behind in, things that are more a part of my routine and regular workflow, but I just decided that day, screw it, I'm spending today on my taxes. I'm getting this off my plate. I'm going to eat the frog. If you've heard that expression, I want to be done with this. I want to get this stuff over to them. and. I probably don't need to tell you, there was huge relief on the other side of that. The difference between avoidance and then being on the other side of just doing the damn thing is huge contrast, feels totally different, and delivered me to a state of relaxation around it. And I wanted to point to this because Whether it's avoiding doing your bookkeeping in real time or avoiding getting your stuff together for your taxes once a year, or avoiding learning what you need to to be able to stay on top of this stuff. The avoidance is big and heavy and keeps you from that space of relaxation, which when it comes to being connected with your flow of abundance is so critically important. If we are not in a relaxed state, then we are not in a receptive state. And if you want to be an open channel for abundance, for financial flow, for more money to flow to you and through your business, then you need to be in a relaxed state. So that's a big part of why I offer all of the support around finance that I do is because people often feel much more comfortable working with me than some suit and tie. And we're able to connect dots with bigger, universal, natural truths and energetic principles. And we're able to connect the dots with astrology and how you're uniquely designed to make money. In any case, I am uniquely positioned to be able to support so many people that would otherwise continue avoiding this stuff, to embrace it so that you can get to a point of feeling chill, relaxed, and empowered around this so that you can be an open and receptive channel to abundance. The difference is huge and it's not something that you can really wrap your mind around. It's something that you really just feel and experience when you actually start to face these things, eat these frogs, get to the other side and experience the difference. So that's a big reason for this episode today. I just want to leave you with some things that will definitely help you because they helped so many clients before you to get to a relaxed, confident, chill, and empowered space around your relationship to tax season, now that we are balls deep in it, at the halfway point of it this year, but that rolls around every year. So that you can shift your relationship to it and ultimately to your channel of abundance and be more open to a more reliable free flow within it. So the first tip that I want to give you is around timing. And this is probably going to seem pretty obvious, but I want to break it down into all of the kind of nuanced angles of why it is true that you should not put it off and you should do it earlier rather than later in the season. So timing wise, you can expect to have received all of the tax documents that you're going to either digitally, in your email, or snail mail in your mailbox, by the first week of February. So free pass not to even think about tax season starting until the second week of February. Which is cool because it gives you some time after year end, all of January and the first week of February to get your shit together. And I super suggest and recommend that you start thinking about that right at the new year rather than waiting until it actually being tax season to start thinking about this stuff. If you get going on New Year's or right after your celebrations, you're much more likely to be able to hit the ground running with your tax preparer when tax season actually starts or as soon as possible after. And I'm gonna drop a piece right here that I'm gonna circle back to later in this episode when I talk about a reframe around what this time even is and is for, but I want to tease now relevant to the timing piece on that this is an opportunity for you to like mindfully and ritually close the prior calendar year to completely free yourself to embrace and step into the next year. So, you know, such a big part of ritual is mindfully and intentionally acknowledging the close of one cycle and the opening of the next. And your tax return is a very comprehensive and official way to do this between calendar years for your business. So one reason that it's such a good idea not to wait too long and to really get going on figuring out all of those pieces and getting everything sorted pretty close to the new year after the new year is why would you wait to close that last chapter if there are still energetic outliers and threads and things that aren't cleared to clear and open the space for the next year. You're not properly able to open into a more expansive realm of possibility for the new year. So you want to do that as quickly as possible. And it feels really good to close that last year. That's a lot of happening that we are given the opportunity each calendar year to bring to a close. So that's one thing. I mean, I can give you the example. It's like, It gives us this opportunity to bring big picture perspective to things, right? And it's interesting, we are by nature trackers, and when we take this opportunity each year without duress, stress, and urgency, when we show up in a chill, mindful, and intentional way to do this recap and closing of each prior year to prepare for tax season, we're able to see certain things and connect dots and notice patterns that can be helpful in terms of our strategy around our money flow, but can also just be really interesting. I have the example that when I went to track my mileage and put it next to the total mileage that I've driven each year for the last three years, I noticed that there has been a downward trend where first it was 13, 000 total miles, then 9, 000 total miles, then 6, 000 total miles. And it was this moment where I just like giggled at myself. I'm like, oh my goodness, I am so trending home body anymore lately, right? So this is one example of the lighthearted and interesting approach and relationship you get to have to this stuff when you're not scrambling last minute, feeling pressured and super stressed out. Like when instead you're just able to take your time and lean in and have it be an interesting and illuminating experience to go figure out your last year numbers and be able to look at them against the numbers of previous years. So, that brings me to the second reason, yo it is so stressful to wait till the last minute. Whatever part of this stuff is already not fun for you, if you add to it that you are under pressure to meet a deadline and you're trying to do these things, feeling forced and stressed, that just sucks. And I can't speak personally on the tax paying side as being one of these people because although I experienced my own dance with resistance and avoidance, I do end up doing them in a timely manner. But I can tell you from the tax preparer side that I witnessed and supported so many clients through being in that position. And not only is it, you know, nervous system and emotional body super dysregulating and uncomfortable to be stressed and rushed like that, you also end up making more mistakes, like you suck more at it, basically, you're not able to embody the version of yourself that's going to flow with it and be skillful at your ability to get your stuff together. It's just like brings out the worst in you and is the most unfun time that this task could possibly be when you wait till the last minute. So now if you're listening to this in this moment, you are not there yet. There is still time for you to make the decision here and now that you are going to sacrifice something else and just decide one day that this is the day. Put it on your calendar right now. Go look at a day that makes sense that you can say, this is the day that I'm going to devote my time and energy to getting my stuff together for my taxes. And then look at the next day on the calendar, even put this in there, if it's helpful for you. This is the day that I'm going to feel the relief on the other side and the relaxation of having this done. The other reason that I want to present to you that you probably shouldn't and don't want to wait till the last minute to get your stuff together for your taxes Is because your tax preparer is supporting a lot of people with this. A lot of people do wait till the last minute. And if you do it earlier in the season, you're also working with the least stressed and best version of your tax preparer. So you are more in flow with your tax preparer and your dance with them as part of your filing experience, the earlier in the season you reach out to them to do this. That's the selfish angle. The other way of saying it is, yo, do them a solid. Don't be one of those people. It just feels so much better not to be one of those people and not to be a part of that experience, that portion of the season where it's rushed, urgent, stressful, high stakes for everyone involved. You have the choice, so why not do it when it's so much more chill? Just a few weeks earlier, you're really not saving yourself that much time by putting it off. Some logistical reasons worth mentioning. One, I found that there was an ignorance piece around why self employed people would wait so long, and it was because they didn't want to have to pay their taxes that they owed any sooner than they needed to. So let me be the one to tell you, remind you, illuminate for you that the way it works is even if you file your tax return before April 15th or whatever the filing deadline is, that money is not actually going to be taken out of your account until the filing deadline. So that is absolutely a non issue, non reason. No matter how early in the season you do it, that is not going to affect when you actually have to pay the money you owe. So let's just strike that reason from the record immediately. If that was something that you had in the back of your mind, justifying taking longer to file your taxes. And the other one is that realistically what would often happen that I saw with so many clients for those that did wait till the last minute is a good percentage of them would end up just having to file late because they just, the pressure was too much, they couldn't get it done in that crunch time right before the deadline. So they either filed an extension if, you know, we were working together already on it. Or, they were so avoidant they didn't even file an extension, either way, you end up paying more. So whatever you would have owed, there's going to be late fees, penalties, and interest, some combination of those, if you don't file by the actual deadline. So that's the other really practical reason, the earlier you do it, the more you set yourself up for the near certainty that you're not going to have to pay any more then you absolutely have to. Okay, that's what I have for the timing piece I hope that I have made a sufficient case from so many different angles of why There is no reason to wait till the last minute and it is just such a better and more productive and cheaper experience to do it earlier in the season My next tip is that you do work with a tax preparer. I had a lot of people that would ask me like, you know, couldn't I just do this on TurboTax? They'd go to fill out the organizer and they're like, if I'm just giving you all this information anyway, why don't I just put it on my tax return? Why am I paying you to do this for me? And they just didn't understand why if they're the ones that are keeping track of everything, doing their bookkeeping, handing everything over, why they need to have the middleman of a tax preparer when it comes to filing their taxes. And before I give my answer to that and my reason why I absolutely think It's a good idea to have a tax preparer. And even as someone that could do my own taxes and obviously know enough to be able to do that, I don't choose to do that. I choose to pay a preparer. But before I get into that, I want to tell you what would usually happen for the people that did go the TurboTax route is that they would end up coming back to me anyway, often last minute, often like, man, can you file an extension? I tried to do it myself or, you know, they'd reach out to me wanting help with it. And I'm like, that's not what tax preparers do. We don't help you with TurboTax. So I can tell you that most people's experience is it didn't work out for them and let me unpack why this is usually the case for self employed people. So for somebody that just has a W2, you can probably get by just using something like TurboTax or H& R Block online. You're literally just inputting numbers. There's no wiggle room. There's nothing crafty or creative that is available really for you to do there. So it's usually okay. But when it comes to being self employed, there are so many moving parts and yes, you are the one as the business owner that is actually keeping track in real time, hopefully, or gathering a year's worth for your taxes. You're the one that is actually making the purchases, hopefully separating between your business and personal accounts. You're the one doing it all behind the scenes. So why is it important to pay a tax preparer? There's a few reasons. One is the accountability piece. Like I said, even as somebody that is not as avoidant as most that usually does it quite on time, having someone that I know is on the other side waiting for me to get that to them makes a world of difference for me. I'll give you the parallel example of that my husband and I had tried various couples therapists doing that kind of work and maintenance on our relationship is really important to us. And we had tried a few couples therapists until finding the one that we're using now, which is just in a whole nother league. She's amazing. She is totally worth every penny that we're paying her. But before we found her, the couple other people that we had worked with, we would talk about it and it didn't really feel like we were getting much out of it. The support that they were offering was mostly holding space like compared to the support that we're getting now, it just didn't feel like we were getting the guidance or making the progress or having the transformation that we were hoping to experience. But what we agreed on every time across the board is that it was worth it to have that accountability that we had a certain scheduled time with somebody else on the other line to show up for our relationship. So, just that accountability piece. Or I'm sure you've experienced, when it comes to anything in your business, any like course or class you've taken. If you just do the DIY version, you don't get as involved or get it done as timely as when you have a coach that is in a telegram chat with you, like I do with my clients in Cosmic Currency, or somebody that's actually there with you next to you, keeping you accountable. It just makes a world of difference. So when it comes to this commonly avoided and potentially stressful thing of filing your taxes, having somebody else that you're working with to keep you accountable on timing, to not let you get stuck, to be carrying the brunt of things so that you don't feel like you're carrying it all on your shoulders and have it feel heavy or daunting. Again, feeding the avoidance. It's just so helpful to have somebody else that you're working with each year. Somebody that's sending you reminders. It's time. Somebody that's providing you resources to make it easy and flow seamlessly for you. Obviously something that I used to do for eight years for my clients. I still support in various ways that help with this, but not specifically, obviously with filing your taxes. I mentioned before I'll mention at the end, I do have an excellent referral if you need one. But that's one reason it's just really helpful, like in anything to have accountability, to have support, to not try and do it yourself. And when you're a business owner, it's complicated. It's not a simple tax return. So it's really helpful to have someone supporting you through that. And that brings me to my next piece that it is complicated. And I said, you know, if you have a just a W 2, if you're not self employed, you can probably get away with it. Even then though, it is not a simple thing, which is dumb. I really think it could be a simple thing. My dad used to always say, I forget what exactly he called it, but like the way that he would talk about the complexity of the taxation system was that it was basically job insurance for tax preparers, because it's just too complicated for the common person that's not doing the continuing education and constantly keeping up with all the things that are changing. Like it just does not make sense for somebody to do. They did it that way, whatever, on purpose, by design, but it is not a simple thing. So it's helpful to enlist somebody that it is their profession to keep up with the changing tax laws to make sure that you don't miss anything. And this brings me to my third thing, which is that you don't want to miss anything. It is 9 times out of 10. The amount that you pay a tax preparer to do your tax return is going to be way less than the amount that you might have had to pay because you just didn't know about a certain credit or loophole or something. Tax preparers are able to make sure through their knowledge of the complex web of the taxation system and the current year tax rules to make sure that you're going to pay the least that you possibly can. And that's usually going to be a savings that far exceeds the amount that you have to pay the tax preparer to file your taxes. And of course, what you pay them is a write off. So you get that benefit as well. And lastly, I think it's a great idea to have a tax preparer because they are just a second eye to have on things. They can catch mistakes that you made. When it comes to most things, it's really helpful to not try and do every side of it at once. So like, for example, when it comes to writing, it's a good idea to write first, edit later with the fresh editing brain, because that's just such a different mind that you need to have. Or when you are building something online, It's such a good idea to focus separately on the creative process around what you're actually creating. And then on a different day with a different mind, go in and plug things into the actual tech tool and tech platforms. This is just smart strategy with anything. It brings out more efficiency in us. We're able to do better in less time, ultimately, when we batch things like that, so we can show up with different parts of our brain. This is true for tax stuff, because It's like when you're staring at a word for too long and it starts to look weird, right? Like, when you are deep in the trenches of getting everything together, it's hard to see the forest for the trees. And so, it's a really good idea to then have a tax preparer that you hand everything to, to have that second eye on everything that you gathered together, so that they can notice if anything looks weird or off, or whatever. I'm not going to give an example because there's so many different ways that this could show up, but I hope that the examples suffice of all of these other areas of our lives where this is a good idea. It's a good idea for your taxes too. You can't expect yourself to catch the mistakes that you may have made while you're deep in just trying to get everything gathered and together. And my last big tip that I want to give circling back to something that I teased earlier is just a suggestion on how to frame and reframe likely what this time of year is for you and your business. So I mentioned that this is an excellent opportunity to mindfully close the last year by bringing awareness to the bigger picture of your numbers, being able to compare them to previous years to see trends or patterns and to be able to have that scanned out even bigger picture perspective of tracking from year to year because you're figuring out these same metrics each year and then you're putting it on a tax return and having this really official synthesized version of like a snapshot of what happened for that year. Super valuable, but I want to take it a step further that when it comes to good tracking, you probably know or can imagine for somebody that tracks in nature, which is an evolutionary skill and leg up that we have had historically, something that human beings are very good at. And has gotten us very far in life. It's not just being able to spot trends in the past. That's the means to an end of our actual skill, which is being able to project into the future. So when you are doing this yearly and seeing it ideally as another opportunity, each tax season to do this again and add another data point to this tracking trajectory, that then, you can look into the next year and be able to make any changes that would be helpful for your money flow and bottom line. Maybe through this process you notice that certain offers or revenue streams are more profitable than others. Maybe you use that as a nudge to either double down on something that's working really well or give some more attention and energy to something that's been falling behind to bring it up to speed with the rest. On the expense dial side of things, maybe you realize through, you know, getting your yearly numbers together that you've been spending way too much on an expense that just isn't bringing you the return. It doesn't have an ROI to justify it. So maybe you do some trimming and hedging to your expenses. There's strategic pieces that very clearly and obviously come into view when you look at the bigger picture like that, that you do when you're looking at everything for your taxes each year. Also on the more energetic side of things, so that's the practical side, like hard numbers, how can things be shifted? How can the income and expense dials be adjusted to be able to bring more profit into the equation? You also have the information and the awareness that you need to be able to set really grounded and effective intentions for your next year. So just by kind of feeling out the trends and again, as trackers, like feeling into where that's taking you, meeting that very mindfully with what your intention is for the next year. And being able to kind of meet the reality of your situation halfway. with the intentions that you want to co create and bring into the mix to help direct where you're heading. The other reframe piece that I want to offer you here is something that I like to call pay to play. So when it comes to any avoidance that you may have just simply because you don't want to have to pay a part of your hard earned money to the government, right? And to taxes, so maybe you avoid it because of that. But what ends up happening is obviously you need to anyway, or you don't, you decide that you're not going to anyway. And you have this heavy burden that ends up manifesting as like a concrete ceiling that keeps you from making more. Ultimately you are keeping yourself smaller. And so you are actually making less, like it seems like, Oh, I, I don't want to have to pay money to the government because that means more in my pocket. But what actually happens is you do end up owing more because you are not taking the time to do this properly to make sure that you can maximize your write offs and owe as little as possible. So you owe more. That may end up accumulating so one day down the road, if you haven't been paying taxes at all, you end up having to do a bunch of years at once. Not only that, they're stacked with penalties and interest because they're late. So, the, the numbers end up really getting bloated and inflated of what you'll actually have to pay. But also that avoidance literally keeps you under that concrete ceiling of not being able to make as much whereas if you do this mindfully and intentionally you accept and align with the fact that this is part of the rules of the game that we're playing in, you set aside money. You not only set aside money to pay your taxes from what you make, but you price your offerings based on being able to set aside that money for your taxes. So when you show up in that way, mindfully and intentionally, you don't end up, it's like no skin off your back. It's actually no extra. You're accounting for that. You're setting it aside so it doesn't blindside you when you go to have to pay your taxes and it just becomes part of it. Pay to play. And you actually end up getting to keep more, make more, and circulate more because you are integrating this part of it into your business money flow. Of course, this is a big part of how I still support clients, all of this stuff around the mindset, the backend systems, the setting aside for taxes, the pricing your offerings based on taking all of these variables into account. Basically, the strategic backend stuff to not only make more, grow more, but be able to have a super chill tax season every year because you are on top of things in real time and ready to go when tax time hits each year. If you need help with anything related to your taxes, please reach out. I have so many resources to make this time of year easy and feel awesome. I have a tax referral that's excellent. A woman who is my age, also a mama. She's a Virgo Sun. I'm a Virgo Moon, but is honestly just a genius at this stuff. And I see her as this reflection of myself. If I also felt like big picture passion around continuing to run a tax referral, practice. Like what she has created and the way that she supports people and bridges worlds to do so is what I would have envisioned creating if my time didn't come to go in a different direction. So can't recommend her highly enough. She's into astrology and cool invisible realm stuff too that animates us in these areas. And if you vibe with me, you'll vibe with her. So definitely reach out. You can also go to cosmicb.link/taxes to request a direct introduction to her. But if you need help with absolutely anything else, if you could use some education around this stuff to just understand why it all works, if that's been something that gets in the way for you, if that's a part of what feeds your avoidance, let me teach you. I have some super low price resources available for you to get you the education you need that you were never taught in school. If you need some resources to go back and piece together all the stuff from the last year because you weren't keeping good records, I can help you with that. If you're ready to get a system in place to start tracking things in real time, I can help you there. If you're craving some of that like world bridging stuff, I've got my Cosmic Cash Codes session. We can dive into your astrology chart to better understand your unique relationship with money and how it can be as ideal and abundance generating as possible. Don't let yourself get stuck in avoidance right now. If you have not already gathered and provided everything from your last year, 2024 of business to a tax preparer, please reach out. Whatever it is that's in the way for you, I can help you with that. And if you don't yet have someone to actually help you with the filing, I have a resource for you too. So please don't let yourself get stuck in avoidance. Don't let yourself put this off to cost you more, both in money and stress. Let this be the year finally that you decide you're not going to let this piece stand in the way of feeling expansive and in flow with your business finances. I got you.