Monday, January 31, 2011

Taxes

Doing taxes is not that difficult with the appropriate software. However, finding all the appropriate paperwork from throughout the previous year can be a real challenge.

This year, because my partner has no educational or teaching expenses to deduct, I went ahead and put the deductions on my taxes. This isn’t the first time, but it has been awhile. Anyway, so I gathered what I thought was all the documents I’d need, only to discover that some documents we didn’t have, like property taxes, so thank God that information is available online. However, every time I thought I’d put in all the information correctly and saved it, something else would pop into my head that I needed to enter.

Organization is key to preparing your taxes right the first time, so I suggest having everything you possibly can think of that you’d need ready to go. I have no idea where the receipts from Goodwill for all the stuff we donated wandered off to (Recycleland, no doubt) but I’m pretty sure after all the digging around and searching I did, I found everything else we possibly needed so I could finish my taxes. The only unfortunate part is that while people who file with the standard deduction will get their refund check right away, those of us filing itemized deductions have to wait until February 14th before they start the review process. Oh well. This money is all going into savings anyway for the move so it’s probably a good thing it won’t be here so quickly!

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