Your chosen tax preparer is of course being paid to help you with your taxes, but it’s in the interests of both parties to try and make the process as simple as possible. You are doubtless paying your preparer by the hour, so the easier their job is, the less time it’ll take them, and if your tax preparer is getting bogged down trawling through your receipts or income documents, they may simply make themselves unavailable to you when the next season comes around.
Here are a few ways that you can make life easier for your tax preparer, and become their perfect client at the same time:
Save your receipts and track your expenses efficiently:
Tossing your receipts into a drawer and forgetting about them until days before you’re due to file them, is the quickest way to make life harder for both you and your tax preparer. Instead, try to take each receipt and make copies of them (you can of course copy a few together at a time), writing down what each purchase was for. Highlighting business purchases can help you to distinguish them from personal receipts. File them in a binder with tabs and organize them in monthly order. Then, to help your tax preparer further, tot up the expenses you plan to deduct and make the total available to them.
Be organized with your income documents:
Your income documents may include W2, 1099 and K-1 forms, and it’s important to keep them all safe as soon as you receive them. File them away and leave them close to your other tax related documents so that they’re easy to get to when your tax preparer needs them.
Store all documents in ring binders:
Ring binders are the simplest and most effective way of storing documents necessary for your tax returns provided they’re labelled accurately at the time of filing to avoid confusion later. You can also store your monthly bank statements in the same way.
Deal with paperwork straight away:
Never let paperwork, receipts or other business-related documents build up in a random pile; always deal with them either immediately, or within 24 hours of receiving them. If you don’t do this in a strict fashion, you’ll send find yourself confused, and if you’re confused, imagine how your tax preparer will feel.
Never underestimate the power of organization:
Being organized with your business paperwork is the best way to help both you and your tax preparer deal with filing in a relatively stress-free manner. While you may have the odd lapse or lazy day, try to review your documents and receipts at least once a week to ensure that you don’t get behind with them.
Tax preparers are there to help you with your taxes, but remember that they are not paid to trawl through your receipts or try and locate documents, and anything outside of their remit will frustrate them and end up costing you more money as they are forced to spend longer preparing your taxes.
Organization is the key to happiness
Just like your parents told you growing up, when you’re organized, you’re less likely to experience the pain and frustration of having to do things at the last minute. Come to your tax appointment as prepared as you can be. Your documentation doesn’t have to be perfect, it just has to be organized.