Organizing Your Taxes

• W-2’s for yourself, spouse and dependent children
• 1099-G (Unemployment)
• 1099-INT (Interest Statements for Mortgage, Savings, Escrow and U.S. Bonds)
• 1099-DIV (Dividend Statements for Stocks and Bonds)
• 1099-MISC (Income Statements for Income Property and Equipment)
• 1099-R (Statements for Pensions, Annuities and IRA distributions) Social Security statements show benefits
• Property Tax Documents

When the time comes to prepare your taxes, these documents will be easy to locate, not to mention the fact that by having an established location for them, they will not be miss-placed during the year. This list is not meant to be an entire list of documents that you receive in the mail—you may receive some that are not listed here and some that are listed, you may not receive. The idea is to have a location for you to store these types of documents that you get one time only, or in the case of donations perhaps several, so that you can quickly locate them when it is time to prepare your return. It does not make a lot of sense to create a folder for each type of form—that will just take up more space in your filing system.

2. If you make a lot of property donations, such as used clothing, toys, computer equipment, or household items, consider using “It’s Deductible” from Turbo Tax.

Using this software it will help you:

a.       Assign Accurate Values by accessing thousands of values for the items you donate to charity.

b.      Track 2006 Donations.

c.       Automatically prepare the IRS Tax Form 8283 which is required when non-cash donation deduction is over $500.

d.      Prints reports you need on the correct form and makes it easy to substantiate your deductions.

3. Receipts. Use an accordion style folder or multiple envelopes to track your receipts by month. If you use an accordion file folder system for receipts, you can purchase one with the tabs already labeled with the months on the tabs. Store this in a location that is easily accessible so that when you need to deposit your receipts you can do so directly in the file. If you chose to use envelopes to keep receipts in, write the month and the year on the front and keep the current month’s envelope in a location where you can quickly access it. If you need to break down your expenses by category, you may want to consider doing so once per month, perhaps at the end of the month, before filing away that envelope and getting out a new one for the next month. This will take much less time than having to categorize an entire years worth of receipts. Some of the categories you may want to use are: clothing, groceries, personal care items, gas, entertainment, etc…

4. If you prefer to track your expenses using computer software, there are two commonly used programs: Microsoft Money and Quicken by Intuit.