Taxes - How to and What to Use

Okay, so its that time of the year again. I have been doing my own taxes with Turbo Tax for many, many years now. The key to this....keep good records during the year.

One of the ways you can do that is to get a filing cabinet. They are cheap at Wal-Mart. Ours was like 40.00. Then get some file folders and voila, filing system in your home.

There are a few ways to go about this. One way is to file by month. Then at the end of each month, total your receipts and write your totals on the outside of your file. Such as prescriptions, doctor visit bills, private insurance costs, donations, etc.

If you are really ambitious, the other way to do this is to keep all your stuff in one file, then at the end of the year you sort through it all then. I prefer step one myself.

 

If you donate to Goodwill, get a receipt from them. You have to write down on it what you donated, but as you are putting it together, just remember to write down on paper as you go what items you donated and how many. Its not hard, and the paybacks are pretty significant on your tax returns.

 

Now, if you work from home, you can also "write off" a percentage of your utility bills, phone bills, and rent. So keep track of that through the year too.

If you own a home, there will be a place for you to enter in how much you paid in interest, taxes and insurance you paid, on some occasions repairs such as energy efficient anything.... Just keep your receipts. Turbo Tax asks you for those totals during the process so don't worry about forgetting. It goes through step by step by step. Easy peasy.

Now, this should bring you to the current. If you go to TurboTax.com you can click on the "start for free button". It is in the middle of the page more towards the left.

 

From there, you just "follow the directions". Seriously. It walks you through step by step. There is NO guessing. It is free to do it in the beginning anyway. You actually complete your whole return, see what you will be getting back....and THEN you pay. If you do a simple return, it is even free.



You should check it out. It will save you a few hundred dollars. And no, they are not paying me... I seriously like their software and I use it every year.