Dry eyes for accountants during tax season

Accountants’ eyes often feel dry during tax season because of long hours focused on spreadsheets, tax software and scanned documents, which slows blinking, usually in heated winter offices. Position monitors slightly below eye level, look away regularly, blink fully, keep vents off your face, and use a lubricating drop as its label directs. See an eye doctor if dryness lingers after busy season.

Why busy season is hard on the eyes

For tax preparers and many accountants, the stretch from January through mid-April is the longest run of screen time all year. The IRS lists April 15 as the filing date for individual returns, and moves it to the next working day when the 15th lands on a weekend or legal holiday. Taxpayers can request an automatic six-month extension with Form 4868, which creates a second rush in the fall. Through both, the work is detailed: small numbers, narrow columns, two or three windows open at once.

Close focus is the problem. When you concentrate on a screen, you blink less often and less completely, and each pause gives the tear film more time to thin. That happens in winter offices with forced-air heat, which dries the air, and in long evenings when you’re already tired.

Setting up the desk

• Put the top of the main monitor at or slightly below eye level. Looking a little down means your eyelids cover more of the eye.
• Sit about an arm’s length from the screen and enlarge spreadsheet zoom rather than leaning in.
• If you use two or three monitors, place the one you use most directly in front of you and angle the others in, so you’re not holding your eyes wide to the side.
• Close or redirect any heating or air conditioning vent that blows across your face.
• Use a document holder at screen height for paper source documents, so your eyes aren’t refocusing up and down for hours.

Our guide to dry eyes with multiple monitors goes deeper on multi-screen setups.

Habits for long return days

Setup helps, but the hours still add up. These small habits fit between returns:

• After finishing each return or reconciliation, look across the room for a few seconds and blink fully several times.
• When you catch yourself staring at a cell, close your eyes gently for a moment, then open them.
• Take a short walk at lunch away from the screen, outdoors if the weather allows.
• Drink water through the day; busy season makes it easy to forget.
• Try to get enough sleep in the crunch weeks; eyes that have been open longer have had more time to dry.

Reading scanned documents and PDFs

Blurry scans of receipts and W-2 forms make people squint and lean forward, which slows blinking even more. Zoom in rather than straining, increase contrast where the software allows, and ask clients for clearer copies when you can. Glare from a window behind the screen makes squinting worse, so close the blinds or move the monitor if light hits it.

Using eye drops at the office

Quell is a lubricating eye drop designed to reinforce the tear film’s oil layer to help reduce moisture loss. Its label gives the Uses as For use as a protectant against further irritation or to relieve dryness of the eye. Directions: Apply 1 drop 3 times per day in each eye. Wash your hands first, since keyboards and paper pass through many hands, and follow the label: Do not touch tip of bottle to any surface to avoid contamination.

Keep the bottle in a desk drawer rather than on a sunny windowsill or near a space heater; the label says Store between 15° to 30°C (59° to 86°F). If you use other eye drops, contact lenses or prescription medicines, ask your eye doctor or pharmacist, because the label doesn’t address combining them. The whole panel is on our Drug Facts page.

Paying with an HSA or FSA

Accountants will appreciate this one. Since the CARES Act in 2020, over-the-counter medicines have counted as qualified medical expenses for health savings accounts and flexible spending accounts, without a prescription. Check your own plan’s rules. Our guide why OTC eye drops count for HSA and FSA explains more, and are eye drops tax deductible? covers deductions.

Ordering before the crunch

Quell ships from Brentwood, Tennessee, with guest checkout, so there’s no account to set up between client meetings. Shipping is $10.00, or free on 3 or more bottles. We don’t promise a delivery date, so order in January rather than the week of April 15. Unopened bottles can be refunded within 30 days of delivery without returning them. Order on the home page.

When to see an eye doctor

If your eyes stay uncomfortable well after busy season ends, or your vision seems blurry at the end of every day, book an eye exam; an eye doctor can work out the cause and what to do about it, and can check whether your glasses suit your screen distance. The label says: Stop use and ask a doctor if you feel eye pain or changes in your vision, if irritation or redness continues, or if the condition worsens or persists for 72 hours.