The Last Business Day of 2016 Can’t Come Soon Enough

The last business day of 2016 has Elizabeth Weintraub driving by Kona Brewing and reflecting.

I don’t know about you but the last business day of 2016 can’t get over fast enough. Tomorrow doesn’t really count. Tomorrow is New Year’s Eve, and it’s a Saturday, so most people will be preparing for celebrations or otherwise thinking up other ways to get out of working. Friday is the last business day of 2016.

It’s been a wonderful year and a hideous year. Certainly since November our outlook for the country has been somewhat bleak, hopeless, punctuated by the occasional yet still daily upset of we can’t f-ing believe what we are reading. But there it is in black-and-white. And we blink, shake our heads, drop our jaws, this can’t be real; but it is real.

Some of us will stay on task and be ever vigilant to ensure our Constitutional rights are not trampled upon; others of us will stick our heads in the sand and wish for it all to be over. Maybe a handful of analytics will try a pragmatic approach.  Some may even rejoice, and say it could be worse. It doesn’t matter. The last business day of 2016 can’t come soon enough.

As I drove along the Queen K in Kona yesterday overlooking the ocean, I spotted an email just as I turned off to head toward Kona Brewing. Some guy was laying it on thick and heavy about how he comes straight the point and performs. He asked about a listing of mine in Sacramento that sold 2 months back for $100K more than he wanted to offer. You know, he should hire a Sacramento Realtor if he wants to buy property in Sacramento. His way is not working.

Despite the irritation, I am polite.

However, if I just did not try to pay my 4th quarter estimated tax payments online last night, life would be a little bit rosier, a tad cheerier. I should have done this before I left for my wor-cation in Hawaii, but I was too busy juggling a million other things to think about taxes. After much struggle, I managed to pay my federal taxes online. The State of California, though, not so much.

Seems the Franchise Tax Board website is down for maintenance from 12/27 to January 3rd. Says you can access limited information, and you can’t open a new account. Since I just want to sign on to FTB and pay my estimated taxes, I should be able to since it gave me a screen. I am very comfortable accessing sites online and have been doing so since 1991. But what can you say about the State of California Franchise Tax Board?

Well, you can say thank your lucky stars you’re not selling a piece of Sacramento real estate that was an investment property because escrow will withhold 3% and send it to the Franchise Tax Board. So there is that. But I, for one, am happy this is the last business day of 2016. Just wanna wash my hands of this icky residue and start fresh in 2017. At least we know what the problem is.

When you get to be an old person like me, you are never happy to see a year end. You wish it would go on and on. Never end. That you would never age, too, LOL. I can’t remember a New Years in my life when I was happy to see the last business day end. Just remember Bette Davis’s famous words.