53: Quick Tips to Ensure You Don't Miss Any Tax Deductions
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Welcome to episode 53 of Permission to be Messy. I'm your host, JoAnn Krall and today I'm giving you some quick tips to ensure that you don't miss out on any of those tax deductions. Quick, disclaimer, this is not tax advice. This is more about organization and some tips. And, obviously if you need tax advice, reach out to a professional.
Okay. If you are disorganized and I know we still have some time as I'm recording this, I just finished doing all my tax stuff, but I know that some people wait until the last minute.
My first tip is don't wait until the last minute to do your taxes. I know not necessarily waiting till the last minute to file them. Because sometimes we want to wait if we owe, but actually preparing them and knowing what you owe or what you're getting as a refund. You want to do that as early as you can, because if you're doing them for yourself you want to be able to research what deductions that you can take. And if you're working with an accountant or CPA, you want to make sure that they have enough time to review your stuff and then ask you questions because if you'd wait till the last minute, and then you go to scramble around to find more information you're going to miss out. And my goal is for you to be able to maximize and take advantage of all the deductions that are offered to you.
So the second tip is just to stay calm. You need to be able to focus and again, this goes down to not waiting till the last minute. If you're listening to this on the day it's released, which is Tuesday, March 5th. There is plenty of time if you're in the US between now and April 15th or whatever the day is this year to get your tax stuff done. So you can do some prep work now. And it will be helpful for you to do a little bit each day.
So the third tip I have. Is to just start by gathering up all your tax documents. If you've been following me along, maybe you've already done that and you already have everything in one spot, which is awesome. But if you haven't had a chance to do that, do not panic. There is still plenty of time. So gather everything up. If you've got stuff in the mail, look for that paper. If you get things via email, reminders to download statements, look there. What you can do is look back at your tax return from the prior year and it'll jog your memory as to what accounts you had last year. Whether you using certain credit cards or bank statements. It'll help you to determine where you need to go look to make sure that you have everything.
Which brings me to my next tip, which is to. create a checklist so that you write down everything that you do need to gather. So things on that list would be, you have your paper file or paper pile of, maybe your W2's 1099s, whatever it is. Maybe you have physical receipts. And then anything digitally, you can just make a note that you want to check your credit card statements, because you want to look through them and make sure you're not missing anything that you want to deduct. You want to check your bank statements. So making a list of all the accounts that you use and so looking at last year's return, you can get a lot of that. Now things may have changed. So think about that. I think, oh, I started using a new card or a new. service or whatever it is, just get, make yourself a checklist. Do a brain dump and, get it all out of your mind. And then walk away from it. And then you can start chipping away at it as we go through the month.
My next tip I do encourage you to seek professional help, especially if you're a business owner, doing your taxes on your own. I mean, yes, there are softwares out there, TurboTax and all that, but they don't always, they're only, they're asking you questions and you don't always know the right answers to be giving this platform.
So if you're comfortable with that, by all means do that. But if you're not, it can be really helpful to go to a professional for this and. if you're someone like me who likes to wait till the last minute to do your books for the year. You got to know about yourself if that's something that you can tackle.For my business. It's really simple for me to do my books all at once. But if you have something more involved, you want to make sure you're keeping up with this, but if you didn't again, stay calm and just focus and do a little bit each day.
And my last tip is if this last minute scramble happens to you every year make a commitment this year that you're going to be organized next year. So you're going to, you're going to review everything that you did, the panic that you felt, where you had to grab things from any difficulties, you had finding things, and you want to make note of that because that's where you're going to want to make the changes throughout the year.
You don't have to do it all at once. You can take a breath. I always say, take a breath in April, the end of April into may, but have that list ready for you so that you can start putting procedures in place to make sure that you're more organized for next year. And take that back. I do have one more tip. If you come down to the end and you're still scrambling and you're panicking and you're, you're trying to find everything. Think about filing for an extension, you still have to pay any taxes owed but at least it will give you more time to get organized and make sure that you are taking advantage of every deduction and credit that you can.
My goal for you is to not stress a tax time. Of course, many of us stress a tax time because we may, owe, that's a different story, but I don't want you to be stressed by disorganization. I definitely want you to maximize your deductions and credits.
And again, I can't give you tax advice, but I can give you lots of advice on getting organized. So if you need help and you want to book a free strategy call with me, that link is always in the show notes. And I'd love to chat with you. There's no obligation. And as always, you can just send me an email if you have a quick question, I'm open to that. And I love hearing from people. In the show notes, as ways to contact me, you can even leave me a little voice recording there if you'd like. So let me know if you have any questions and as always I'm wishing you much progress, peace, purpose, and the permission to be messy. Thanks for listening.
