The year is nearly three quarters of the way over, which means that you need to start planning for tax season. Sure, you still have over six months until April 15, 2016, but the sooner you get started planning for the inevitable, the less time it will take to get organized when the time does get here.
For me, PIMYU has been absolutely wonderful in terms of getting and staying organized. Even when I fall behind on the budget, keeping track of tax information is incredibly easy.
Work it into Your Routine
Whenever we do a major cleaning and take stuff off to donate it, we make sure to get a receipt for our stuff. As soon as we get home, it only takes about two minutes to get everything entered and a copy of the receipt saved. I save them out as 0 expenses so they show up on reports, and I name them Charitable Donations, so they are easy to identify and filter in Excel reports. When we did taxes earlier this year, pulling it out of PIMYU significantly reduced the amount of time it took to calculate all of the donations.
Home Improvements
The rules and regulations may or may not change for the next tax season, but if you keep a record of everything you do between now and then in terms of home repairs, you will be ready to get any applicable tax credits for energy efficient improvements.
Compiling Documentation
There are a lot of documents that pertain to taxes beyond donations and home improvements. From moving and changes in your family to winnings and loses, you probably end up unable to find over half of your tax documentation when the time comes. My family has gotten in the habit of keeping all of our receipts and records (with account numbers and personal information omitted) stored in PIMYU. We also have a folder in case we need the hard copy, but just having a scan helps us remember exactly what the document looks like. In turn, this reduces the amount of time it takes to find the paperwork. We have learned to track amounts so that we have an idea if we need to shift withholdings to make sure we don’t owe taxes.
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