Cha-Ching and Chasing Squirrels: Adventures in ADHD Tax Gaffes
I’ll be talking a lot about the ADHD Tax in 2024. It’s not the kind of tax where your CPA will tell you that you’re getting money back this year. And it’s not the kind of tax from which ADHDers can ever take a holiday.
ADHD Tax: A Faceoff Between Finances and Forgetfulness
The ADHD Tax is that extra $15,000 to $20,000 the research shows ADHD patients pay every year. This “tax” is comprised of late fees, penalties, fines, and never returning the unwanted items we buy. Or, in my case…
Intending to return the blue dress I recently bought from Amazon, downloading the QR Code so I could drop it off at my local Kohl’s store, and then ⬇️
Setting the dress on my desk so I would have a visual cue to remember the deadline, and then ⬇️
No longer seeing the dress, because it became part of my everyday surroundings, and then ⬇️
Forgetting the deadline, ⬇️ and then
Missing out on getting my refund…again. And then, ⬇️
The nice lady at Goodwill greets me by my first name.
🎯Dr. Russell Barkley said it best: ADHD should be called IDD…
“INTENTIONAL Deficit Disorder.”
🧠These ADHD taxes build up because our pre-frontal cortex can’t play nice in the sandbox with the rest of our functioning brain. It turns out, that patch of gray matter matters. Your pre-frontal cortex helps you organize, keep track of time, and remember little details, like your short-term memories. An ADHDer’s pre-frontal cortex is, on average, 8.7% smaller, according to the MRI studies.
🎅Yes, Virginia, there is a physiological difference. ADHD is not some Santa Claus fantasy diagnosis, as many people still believe.
The story I’m about to share is one of my many unforced errors. And I’ve done this more than once.
A few years back, I decided to make my business into a limited liability corporation. But filling out government forms is not my forte’. For this, I rely on my friend Amber. She shares my computer screen remotely, patiently talking me through all the “Now click here, no, NOT there, click HERE!” guidance I need to get through labyrinthine, online government forms. I hate them all with the heat of a thousand suns. I’m convinced their user experience is confusing by design so people cannot easily sign up for benefits or become non-profit organizations.
A couple of months ago, I received this letter from my secretary of state:
My reaction:
Whoa! Now THAT’s a little harsh. Talk about DARK wording. Wouldn’t ‘A Friendly Deadline Reminder’ better serve the public as the title for this type of letter? I spent the next 5 minutes brainstorming a listicle of new and improved headlines for Mr. Giannoulias.
He had written to inform me that I was well past my deadline for turning in WriteBrain Media LLC’s “Annual Report.”
I froze. How the f*ck do I do an “annual report”?!
I knew this annual report was something I’d probably done in the past, but I could not remember how I did it. Or if I’d ever done one. You’d think I’d remember something this consequential, so important to my business, but nooooooo. It’s moments like this I really hate on my brain.
It’s not as if I’d ever rented the board room of my local library to hold an official meeting with myself to present myself with my 2022 annual report. That I’d remember. I’m a board of one, bored by government bureaucracy.
I’ll have to ask Amber the next time I talk to her. And I promptly forgot about it.
📪That is, until the next two escalating levels of urgency letters of delinquency arrived from Mr. Giannoulias, threatening to dissolve my LLC.
When the third letter arrived, I panicked. I called Amber. She reminded me how simple it was. And that’s when I finally had a vague recollection of the last time. All I had to do was scan the QR code from the letter and then a screen would appear and prompt me, asking if I was still the president, if my address had changed, and if the structure of my company had changed. Just three clicks of yes, yes, and no and it was done. All of these months of angst, procrastination because I couldn’t remember how to do a three-click annual report.
Here’s the kicker:
👉The ADHD Tax for late filing? $100.
👉The price if I had turned it in on time? $75.
👉My Total LLC Renewal Fee for 2023: $175.
And that, ladies and gents, is the pathology of my typical ADHD Tax.
P.S. A special thanks to TotallyADD.com for great graphics and empathy.