Tax Prep made easy!

If you’re already finished filing your 2007 taxes, great job!! If not, that’s okay. You still have time! Below are some ways to help tax time go even smoother this year or the next. These tips work well for pilers (vertical storage) or filers (horizontal storage).

Depending on your life, you can amass quite a paper trail of your experiences for the past year, or maybe you just grab your W2s and head down to H&R Block and tah-dah, you’re finished. Either way, the best preparation for yourself or your “tax person” is to keep excellent records and maintain it all in one place. Are you self-employed, own a home, have dependant children or lots of medical bills? If so, you may need to keep a lot of tax related paperwork and information about each of these items.

If you are a “filer” like me and don’t need to keep a lot of paperwork to support an income tax filing in case of an audit, then you are lucky indeed! Just do what I do; create one special place for all your information that relate to your taxes for the current tax year. I keep a simple manila file folder labeled "TAX YEAR ____” in my desktop filing system into which goes my most recent pay stub until I get the end of year one (I shred each previous week’s stub AFTER I’ve checked both to make sure everything looks good), donation receipts, work related expense receipts and medical expense receipts.

When January rolls around, I put my W2s in the "TAX YEAR ____ file" along with the paperwork I receive from my various Financial institutions, Charitable Organizations and my student loan lender. As you know, I LOVE LISTS! I created a little sheet that I laminated and then paper clipped to my “tax file”. I can check off the items with an erasable marker as I receive them. My list says “W2: Discover Organizing Inc.”, “ING 1099”, “Fidelity Documentation” and “Loan Interest Statement”, etc. After I’ve received everything, I take out my file, staple the donation/expense receipts together for each category, tally up the dollar amount and record it on a post-it for easy viewing. I can then sit down at the computer and get all my tax filings done in one sitting without having to shuffle a forest of paper!

Next year’s taxes will be a little more involved for me. My fiance has accumulated quite a bit of medical paperwork! Since I do both of our taxes, I realized my system for handling our taxes will have to change. I decided to use the Pendaflex Pilesmart to keep all of his medical paperwork together.

The Pendaflex Pilesmart is a great tool for keeping all manner and sizes of papers together in a “binder” with 6 built-in tabs and which doesn’t require any hole-punching (I deplore hole-punching). I have labeled each section to hold something unique:

• “Prescription Medicines” - holds all the receipts for his Pharmaceutical purchases/medications


• “Medical Bills” - holds all of the bills or copies of them if I have to send back the original. I write the check number and date on the bill in case of billing concerns.
  
• “Claim Activity” – Aetna alerts me to each time there has been activity on my fiancee’s account. I go on the website and print out each specific event. I then check with him make sure that everything is correct on the printout.


• “Information” – I keep a list of the different Doctors’ information and phone numbers, the different supplies and medications (with dosages) that my fiance needs for easy reference.


• “B Medical” – I keep his other records/receipts of medical expenses, i.e. Eye Doctor, Physical Therapy, etc.


• “W Medical” – My little section of the file that holds all 3 pieces of paper that pertain to me!

If you have several categories of deductions/exemptions that you need to keep separate, the Pendaflex Pilesmart will definitely come in handy. The 6 sections can be separated further by using manila file folders to create subcategories. For example, if you have multiple rental properties you can label one section Rental Properties and then have folders for Property #1 and Property #2.

If you own your own business, you can keep a separate Pendaflex Pilesmart binder so that the business related information doesn’t get mixed in with your personal papers. Bring your accountant your binder and tell them that next year you'll be on vacation in April spending the refund you received after filing in February! They will be impressed with your organizing pizazz and thank you for making their job easier. Heck, they might ask where you got that snazzy binder!

Whatever your personal situation may be, I would highly recommend that you come down to the Discover Organizing Store and pick up a Pendaflex Pilesmart to help with your tax preparation (they are not available at Office Depot, Staples, etc. so don’t waste the gas making a trip). Once you own one, you’ll wonder how you got along without it!

Here’s to making your tax prep easier with a Pendaflex Pilesmart,