Hardge Financial

5 Tips to Help You Avoid Any IRS Anxiety in 2007 December 15, 2006

Here are some tips to help you prepare in order to avoid a stressful and potentially costly return.

1) Gather all necessary documentation long before you sit down to prepare your taxes. Much of the stress associated with preparing your taxes has to do with finding the proper documentation. Take the time to find all tax related material before your W-2 form arrives in the mail.
2) Categorize and tabulate your receipts. Hopefully you have been saving all tax related receipts, and now’s the time when you sit down, put them into their proper categories, and tabulate them.
3) Calculate twice, record once. The IRS states that math errors are the biggest mistake taxpayers make when filing their own returns. The IRS already has access to much of your financial information, or if you make simple addition and subtraction errors when working with those numbers, you’ll quickly receive a correction notice from the IRS. So calculate twice and record once.
4) Recognize that tax saving is a year round task. There are things you can do year round in order to increase your tax benefits, especially if you have your own business. Find out what these are and begin doing them. You may be weary in enlisting the help of a professional tax preparer, but the truth is they can often save you much more money than you’ll pay in the end.
5) Don’t procrastinate professional help. If you wait around until April 1st to enlist the help of a tax professional, chances are you’ll be out of luck. That’s the busiest time of the year for most tax preparers and they’ll be hard-pressed to fit you in that late in the game. Consult with a professional early in the year and come equipped with well-organized documentation; you’ll be ready for a stress free tax season.

Note for life: As your tax situation becomes more complicated, a tax professional makes more sense. Tax laws can be confusing and deductions may be difficult for the layperson to recognize. There comes a time when the benefits of a tax professional far outweigh the
costs. Consult with a tax professional today!

Tools You Can Use

At Hardge Connections, we keep our clients ‘connected’. We’re totally committed to educating you and our goal is to serve you better!

Visit our ‘Connections‘ page to download documents and more:

~ Tax Appointment Checklist
~ Tax Fact Sheet for New Homeowners
~ Tax Fact Sheet for New Parents
~ Tax Fact Sheet for New Small Business Owners