With about a week to go before April 15th deadline, now would be a good time to start working on your taxes. Here's three simple steps than you can do right now.
1. Gather your tax documents. It would be a good idea to take a look at last year's return to help jog your memory about various documents you might expect, such as interest or dividend statements. This year, I took a different approach and created a small binder and a checklist based on information from my financial software. Making sure you have various tax statements and receipts can go a long way to making sure your tax preparation process smoother.
2. Pick your tax prep software. The name of the game in taxes is being in full control of the process, I think. The more you understand how the tax is calculated, the more confident you'll feel that the numbers are right. And that's why I think choosing the right software is vitally important. There are many good programs to choose from, and which one is right for you depends partly on how easily and user-friendly the software is. Shelley Elmblad (About.com's resident expert on financial software) and I both like the full-featured versions of TaxCut and TurboTax. There are other software providers too, such as TaxACT and even free software options.
3. Dig in and start working on your tax return. If you need some extra help, Shelley Elmblad provides helpful tips for getting started with TurboTax and similar tips for TaxCut. All the top programs, in fact, feature an interview-style format to help you move along through various parts of the tax return. And if you get stuck, you can always ask a question in the tax forum and we'll try to help you out
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