Tech Tips for Taxes

Ok, I admit that the subject of taxes isn't quite my passion but our Tech Tips Tuesday webinar last night (Feb. 10, 2015) on tax preparation was really fun. There are actually some ways that can make keeping up with your tax obligations easy, convenient and FREE. Now that's my passion! :-)

First of all we learned that everything you need to know about taxes can be found at the IRS's website at www.irs.gov. Whether you're looking for information concerning your personal, business, ministry or other requirements, everything can all be found here with a simple search. For this particular post I'll be talking about those who are self-employed, or as the IRS calls us, sole proprietorships.

Below I've recapped five of the top tips we discussed during the webinar. Of course I'm no tax expert so please consult and verify this information with your own personal accountant, attorney or tax professional.

Tip 1: According to Schedule C, Form 1040 for Sole Proprietorships, there is a list of expenses that must be tracked each year as listed in Part II. This can be used as the starting point when it comes to tracking your business expenses.

Tip 2: Online methods of tracking your expenses can be a time- and life-saver. There are sample expense forms that you can customize for free at OfficeOnline.com under the Templates section (see my former post on OfficeOnline.com here). And of course you can always Google "free business expense forms" for a plethora of additional suggestions.

Tip 3: Once you've figured out all your numbers, you can actually file your taxes online for free. There are hundreds of sites out there, but the IRS has a list of sites they recommend for filing your taxes online. Their list can be found on their IRS.gov site by clicking here.

Tip 4: Find a good software program that can help you do the hard stuff, or at least to do the stuff that can save you time and future frustration. For example, there are apps out there that will help you keep up with your receipts by allowing you to take a photo of them to upload and attach to your expense reports. Yep. There's a wonderful free web-based tool that will let you do that and a whole lot more called WAVE. Check out their website at www.waveapps.com. It's like an accounting software suite for 'micro-businesses' (defined as solopreneurs and small businesses with less than 10 employees). I think you will be impressed.

Tip 5: Get help or at least some good advice from a tax professional. There are some good, honest people who are willing to help you with questions and filing. If you need a few good tried and true references contact me and I'll give you some recommendations.

Repeat after me, "Tax preparation can be fun." Happy filing! :-)