The due date for federal income tax returns is just around the corner. If you haven’t already gotten on top of your taxes, it’s time to do so. These last minute tax tips can help you meet that April 15th deadline without a problem with the IRS.
Estimate the Tax You’ll Owe
Ideally, you’ve been making quarterly estimated income payments and you have a clear idea of how much you’ll owe to the IRS. If, for any reason, you’re not going to get your tax paperwork done on time, you can easily file for an extension, as long as you’ve already paid however much tax you expect to owe on April 15th. It may not be a bad idea to overestimate, depending on the reason the rest of your paperwork won’t be ready — you can face penalties if you underestimated what you might owe.
Having an estimate can also make things easier if you will be on time with your tax return but just haven’t gotten around to it yet. You don’t want to be in the position that you need to make a payment and don’t have quite enough in your business checking account for any reason.
Get Organized
If you’re going to be asking your tax preparer for a rush job, you’ll have much better results if you aren’t handing over a shoebox of receipts or equally disorganized electronic files. There are tools out there that can scan and organize your receipts — Shoeboxed, for instance, just requires you to stick your receipts in an envelope and mail them off. There’s a fee for such services, of course, but if you aren’t going to get to it yourself, the fee is much lower than you might pay to your CPA for a similar service.
Check Your Resources
Trying to claim a particularly difficult tax deduction or credit? Check your professional associations or other resources for guides to doing just that. Many groups offer a regularly updated tax guide for those bumps in their industry, especially focusing on how to appropriately claim specialized deductions. For instance, if you are a building contractor, you may be claiming one of the various energy efficiency credits related to projects you’ve built over the last year. The paperwork can be complicated, but many local contractor organizations offer their own version of a guide to that particular tax credit.
Your personal resources can also make the process easier. If you work with the same tax preparer year after year, he may send you a simplified document to fill out about the changes in your business over the last year, rather than requiring you to fill out every form from scratch. You’ll still have to have all your paperwork but you can avoid having to calculate much more than what your bookkeeping software can already provide.
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Tags: cpa, irs, receipts, tax preparer, taxes
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