Audit: Government 0, Brendan 1
My obsessive archiving of documents related to my contract software engineering work has paid off. Yesterday a representative of the Revenue Commissioners (Ireland’s IRS) arrived to perform the audit of our 2004 tax return. Also arriving was our accountant from Browne & Murphy, the firm in Dublin which we started using a long time ago. (I find the Irish tax system quite intimidating.)
Despite my ongoing worries, it was all pretty survivable. Since I’d made sure to keep all of my invoices, bank statements, etc, the agent of the Revenue Commissioners was able to do everything pretty quickly. She had a bunch of questions to run through, then our accountant, Elana, and myself sat in the livingroom enjoying idle chatter while the books were being reviewed. The accountant had put together an awesome color-tabbed booklet of all of our accounts, and even had a great spreadsheet of our various bank transactions throughout the year. We got to find out how much we spent at Mitchell & Son on wine that year. Mmmmmmm, Pinot… 😉
Fingers crossed we don’t enjoy this experience again for a while.
