Tax Season

How it works

The mechanics of this kit, plainly — what runs and when, where the data lands, and what you look at.

• Document gather runs the 1st of the month · 7:30am and keeps the This return dashboard fresh. The first of the month — reads your email for the documents the return needs, and files them into the pack.
• What is captured lands in the Tax returns record, which lives at Data/Tax Returns in your vault — yours to open, search, and edit like any other file.
• What is captured lands in the Return needs record, which lives at Data/Return Needs in your vault — yours to open, search, and edit like any other file.
• What is captured lands in the Tax pack record, which lives at Data/Tax Pack in your vault — yours to open, search, and edit like any other file.
• The This return dashboard reads from the record and shows, at a glance: to the deadline · what the return still needs · income on record · deductions on record · items in the pack · the pack by category · from the last gather · the pack · your returns · how this board works.

The wiring, in one breath: Tax capture writes to Tax returns · Tax capture writes to Return needs · Tax capture writes to Tax pack · Document gather writes to Tax pack · Tax pack shown by This return · Return needs shown by This return · This return kept fresh by Document gather · Tax pack summarised by Pack summary.

Getting the most from it

A kit earns its place when it changes what you look at and what you say, not when it is installed. This is the rhythm that makes it pay.

• Frame the return the day you install — the year, the deadline, and the kinds of income and relief in play — and let Bursar write the list of what it needs. What the return still needs is the honest signal on the board from that moment: a tick is a document in the pack, and nothing else moves it.
• Say a document the way you'd say it to a friend — "the interest certificate came", "gave £120 to the food bank" — and Tax capture files it and ticks the list. Forward the email or drop the statement in the vault and say what it is; a figure from memory is written as your word, and the receipt replaces it on the same row when it turns up.
• Look at the board on the second of the month, after the Document gather has read your email for the documents on the list. From the last gather says what it found, each with its sender; a line reading "still missing" is a phone call or a shrug, and only you know which.
• Read Income on record and Deductions on record as what has been gathered, never as what you owe — each says how many items it rests on and when it was last summed. The countdown is as of the same gather; the deadline itself is on the register.
• When something on the list turns out not to apply — no dividends this year, the accountant doesn't need that one — say so, and Bursar marks it not needed on your word alone. That is the correction that keeps "6 of 8" true.
• When it is time, ask for the pack summary: one sheet in your vault with every item, its amount, where it came from, the subtotals, and what is still missing — for you or whoever files. It never fills a form, never works out what is owed, and never says what to claim; the decision, and any accountant, is yours.

Make it yours

Nothing here is fixed. The pieces are ordinary agents, routines, records and dashboards, so anything you know about shaping those applies. Retire whatever earns nothing.

Things people usually change first

Say any of these in chat, or edit them on the kit’s page in the app.

• What the return needs — the list is yours: add an item by mentioning it, and mark one not needed on your word.
• What you call each return — the year on the register is the word Bursar uses back.
• When the Document gather runs: the first of the month by default, weekly when the deadline is close, or off and the pack kept by hand.
• How close to the deadline a missing item earns a card: sixty days is the default, and the deadline itself at thirty.
• Which senders it may read for tax paperwork — your employer, your banks, your pension provider — and what never to file.

Your first run

Installing starts a short setup conversation — not a form. Answer roughly, correct later.

1. Installing ends with "Meet Bursar" — the same keeper who runs Bills & Utilities and Mortgages & Loans, if you have them — and a short conversation, not a form. It starts with the frame: which tax year, as you name it, and when it is due. Then one tap-to-answer panel offering the kinds of income and relief a return can carry — employment, freelance work, rental property, savings interest, dividends, pension income and contributions, gifts to charity, work expenses, selling something — and from what you pick, Bursar proposes the usual documents in plain words and writes each one you agree to onto the list. Anything you already have goes into the pack as you say so.
2. Nothing in that conversation reads your email. The Document gather does — on the first morning of each month it searches for exactly the documents on the list, plus the senders who usually send tax-time paperwork, and asks for email access the first time it runs. Run it straight away from the Routines screen if you would rather not wait; the first run reads back to the start of the return's period.
3. Skip the conversation and the door quietly stays open: until a return is on the register, the kit page, the board and Bursar's chat keep the offer ready, and the first-of-the-month gather leaves one card asking for the year and the deadline rather than searching for nothing. The first return, however it arrives, closes it.
4. From the first gather with a return framed, each document found becomes one row in the pack with its sender as evidence and ticks its item on the list; the board's totals and countdown are redrawn as of that morning. Most months it says nothing. It leaves a card only when something on the list is still missing with the deadline close, when the deadline is within a month, or when it needs you to say what a document is.

Watch the first pass, then tell it what you would have done differently — that correction teaches it more than any setup could.

The essentials

Learning, preferences and run costs work the same in every kit — so they are covered once, in the Kits guide.

Living with a Kit — the Kits guide →

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