It’s April third. Do you know where your tax return is?  If you live in Boston, chances are good it’s already in your bank account.  A new ranking by doxo, an e-payment solution site and “digital filing cabinet” looked at the most organized cities in the U.S., and found (surprise, surprise) that Bean Towners are among the most obsessive-compulsive in the nation when it comes to detail-oriented tasks like on-time tax filing.  According to Steve Shivers, the cofounder and CEO of doxo, when people file their taxes is a keen indicator of who’s got their junk drawers in order. Why? Because it takes an organized individual to avoid the last-minute scrambling (not to mention receipt-finding) to file. His company was founded in 2008 out of necessity—he and cofounders were literally drowning in documents and reciepts at tax time and knew there must be a more convenient solution. “The average U.S. household has 25 different business that they deal with,” shivers told me today by phone. “So we built doxo to be a digital filing cabinet for all of that paperwork.”  To prove the point that his service is a much-needed one, Shivers and doxo set out to show America’s biggest cities just how disorganized they really are, especially when it comes time to e-file. “Tax time comes every year and the whole country’s scrambling,” he says, and notes that even online services like his see the most activity in March and April as people begin gathering documents accumulated over the course of the year.  The firm looked at several metrics of organization to compile the first annual list of the Most Organized Cities, just in time for tax-season. Each city’s numbers were tallied and the Metros awarded a ranking on the dOI, the “doxo Organizational Index.”  In the interest of full transparency:  The doxo Organization Index (dOI) ranks major U.S. cities based on a number of key organization factors broken down by Primary and Secondary Factors. Primary Factors include: Recycling Rates, Individual Income Tax Filing Timeliness, and Junk Mail Cancellations; and 2) Secondary Factors include: Concentration of members of the National Association of Professional Organizers (NAPO), with bonus points awarded to cities for sock drawer organization as well as cities with the greatest number of unique providers and documents uploaded in users doxo accounts.  Ahem, sock drawers? Doxo borrowed data from chemistry.com who somehow polled American singles on how they organize their top dresser drawers. Messy sock drawers=messy tax filers. According to doxo, the total possible points for each major city was 100. Boston ranked first on the list with an index of 97.7, as compared with 57.3 for Houston, the 25th city on the Index. Seattle, the city that doxo cofounder Shivers calls home, came in a lack-luster No. 17 on the list, with a cumulative score of 74.0.  “If nothing else it shows this is an unbiased list,” Shivers jokes about his hometown’s organization (or lack thereof). Also missing from the top 10, which includes three cities each from Florida and California is FORBES hometurf of New York City. “Doxo’s goal is to help people get organized without putting in a ton of effort,” Shivers says, hinting that both New Yorkers and Seattle natives could use some work in that area.  Readers: Are your taxes filed? Is your city organized? Click through the slideshow to see who landed in the top cities for neat freaks 2012.
Doxo crunched the numbers on organization and tax-preparedness to find out what cities are most prepared for 2012 tax season. Are you ready?