Tax Time: Another Corporate Holiday?

It seems that with every holiday, a huge laundry list of retailers will vie for your attention and your money. If it's Presidents' Day, it's the car dealers practically begging you to come in and take a look at the inventory they're trying to liquidate. If it's Christmas, Halloween, Thanksgiving or Valentine's Day, the card companies want you to buy from them.

It doesn't matter what the holiday, or even if it truly is a holiday, if there is a day designated to something, you can bet that a retailer will be one marketing ploy away from cashing in on it.

So, given the fact that tax time is just around the corner, it should only make sense that office supply and organization stores would want to cash in on one of the most hectic of times of the year by offering piece of mind to customers if they buy from their stores. Oddly enough, we buy into this frenzy despite the fact that the phrase corporate holiday has been slung around so much, it seems extremely trite and boring to use it, but what the heck? To make marketing material in honor of tax time has got to be one of the most blatant of corporate "holidays."

The Container Store recently ran a full page advertisement in The New York Times informing customers of their Tax Time Sale. So, unlike any other sale at The Container Store, this sale promises to give people the things they will specifically need to quash any of their tax-time worries.

So, that nifty mesh desk station with the tax-time sale price of $9.99 somehow has some sort of magical quality very different from the ordinary desk station organizer you bought at Staples for $5 a couple months ago. And you certainly can't forget about that 13-pocket porfolio or accordian-style file with a tax-time sale price of $11.99 either.

The Container Store isn't the only one banking on people wanting to spend more on office supplies. Everyone is doing it and advertising with the whole angle that people need to buy brand new folders, desk organizers, pens or computers to help them with their taxes.

Those of us with our heads screwed on semi-tight however, are smart enough to see beyond that, right? One would obviously hope that most people would have already had the accordian-style folders to save all their important paperwork prior to tax time coming around.

Sure, most of us are scrambling come the passing of January when we all know the clock starts ticking to start sorting through all the paperwork and getting everything gathered for an accountant to look over (or if you are incredibly D.I.Y., for you to enter into your Turbo Tax document). We don't need retailers telling us what we should be getting or what we need to do to get organized.

And, hey if you're still scrambling around looking for account details and statements come the end of March, the Internet will be your friend. Essentially everything from regular savings accounts, Roth IRA information or anything else you accrue interest on, can be found online and printed out to save you from potential IRS auditing and a major stress attack. If you're at that point, trust anyone, when they say no file folder with printed flowers on it that you got on sale from Office Max is going to make you feel better about missing tax paperwork.