Delegating - It's A Good Thing

Before my son graduated from high school, everything fell on me to solve or resolve.  I did this willingly because I am his mom and I just wanted him to focus on school and not be stressed.  Asperger's was enough for him to have to deal with.  I dealt with everything else.

Lately though, all that's changed.  I am becoming a champion at delegating.  Even when I don't really try to delegate, somehow things just get done.  It's great!

When The Boy came home for the wedding a couple of weeks ago, there was a stack of things that needed resolving.  The first was a tax bill from the IRS that had come in the mail.  Back during the summer before his senior year, he got mad at his dad and decided to start his own computer company.  He and his friend got together, came up with a name, a plan and incorporated.  Unfortunately, school started before they could really get the company up and running so they never made much money, except from the virus they got off my computer and the printer they set up for The Murph and a couple of other clients who happened to go to school with them.

Corporations can be very complicated.  They cost lots of money, even if you don't make any money from them and tax returns have to be filed yearly.  Someone has to be paid to do these returns.  When The Boy and D, his "business partner" decided they should close the company last year, they got the guy who has been doing their tax returns to help close it for them.  This is the same guy that I hired to tutor The Boy when he was about to take the ACT.  Just so happened that the guy, P, does tax returns and business related things for businesses as well as tutor students after school.

He handled all the paper work and they paid their final tax bill and closed up the company that never really was.  Then surprise surprise!  The Boy gets a tax bill for over $2,000 from the IRS for penalties and whatever that I have no idea what it's for or why they are still getting taxed or whatever.  A company set up by two high school boys who have Asperger's, one who is angry at his dad and determined to challenge him in some kind of computer war and prove him wrong, the other trying to decide if they can somehow squeeze guitar repair right in there with computer repairs.

The company was basically one old dilapidated filing cabinet and an old door, turned table, laid out on two saw horses in a corner of my basement.  I don't think one computer or guitar was ever even repaired down there.  

Now both boys are in college.  When I broke the news to the Boy about the outrageous IRS bill, he begged me to handle it.  "Mom, I'm so busy right now.  I have so much on me with all these school projects, won't you PLEEASE handle it??"

So I broke down and promised I would.

Then I did what I have come to do best.  I delegated.  

I emailed P, our tutor/tax guy and told him the situation.  He said he would do it if I wanted him too.  I said yes, that would be GREAT!  

That was Wednesday.  On Thursday I got an email from him saying that he called the IRS and he was put on hold for over 20 minutes, then he talked to someone, but it was the wrong person.  They put him on hold for 5 more minutes.  Then they told him to call back on Friday.  Friday he said he was busy, but he would get back on it Monday.

Another good thing is he said he doesn't charge for the hours he's on hold or on any call that lasts less than 5 or 10 minutes.   I say, whatever it is, it will be worth every penny if he is able to set the IRS straight on this bill that should not even have been charged to a company that never really was a company and now doesn't even exist.  Delegating.  I love it!

The apartment where The Boy is living has also become an issue.  They decided that the $510 that they said we owed over the financial aid amount wasn't the only thing.  Out of the blue, they decided we not only owe another $100, but since we hadn't paid (we didn't even know we owed it) they tacked on another $50 bucks.  Then they decided to call and harass me about it.  I told them I wasn't paying a $50 late fee on something I didn't even know I owed.  They couldn't even explain how or where the extra $100 came from.  Something about that was next July' s payment.  What!  He's not even going to be there next July!  

I told them there was NO WAY I was going to call up The Boy's dad and ask for more money.  We were lucky he paid the $510.  Then yesterday, before I even got a chance to delegate, The Boy called and said he took care of it and paid the $16 electric overage fee that his apartment had for the month.  He said he had them take off the $50 late fee and gave them another email address for him since the email they probably sent him about the $100 ended up in his spam folder and being deleted before he saw it.  Apparently, he gets lots of spam.  He also said that his dad never paid the $510.  So what happened to it?  We have NO IDEA!  They told me $510 was paid last month.

We do know one thing - next year he's going back to the dorms!  That apartment complex is screwed up!  Dorms also have unlimited electricity so he doesn't have to worry about going over his monthly "allotment."

So two things handled by someone other than me.  Yes, delegating is great!