19 tax tips to help you save time, effort and money

1. If your income allows it, you can still make tax deductible contributions to a traditional IRA plan before 4/15/2009 for tax year 2008.
2. Start organizing your information to do your taxes or provide to your accountant
3. Scan tax related documents and e-mail them to your accountant
4. Add-up all of the charitable contributions you've made last year - if any amounts are larger than obvious or you have large amounts in general, use the internet to determine reasonable market price for your donations - you're accountant will appreciate the back-up.
5. Make sure you receive written confirmation from all charities of the amount you've given in cash
6. Have you received all of your w-2 and 1099 statements from your employers?
7. Have you received all of your 1099 statements for interest income?
8. Have you received all of your 1098 statements for mortgage interest paid?
9. Make sure you can document real estate taxes paid.
10. If you have complicated taxes, make sure you choose an accountant in the next few weeks
11. If you had substantial medical expenses - start adding them up. If I recall, they need to exceed 7.5% of your income to be deductible.
12. If you have rental properties, start working on depreciation calculations for your real estate, collect mortgage payments and collect maintenance and operating expenses.
13. If you drove for a charity or medical purposes, some of your mileage may be deductible.
14. 529 contributions are NOT IRA contributions - they are only tax deductible in the year actually made -- not 4/15 of the following year -- they are actually treated as gifts given.
15. Track your accounting expenses from last year, they are also tax deductible
16. Do you have any capital losses in excess of $3,000 from last year? If so, you may be able to roll them forward to this year and use them.
17. Make sure you receive your partnership income and tax expense k-forms from any partnerships you're in.
18. Review all tax related forms from other parties and aggressively make any corrections needed - these are reported to the IRS on your behalf by the other party - you want them to be accurate.
19. If you have more than one job or changed jobs and your social security with holdings exceeds the limit because both jobs collected it (possibly doubling your contribution), you're owed a refund of any contribution over the limit - make sure you document this.
20. If you refinanced and paid points - check into the deductible benefit of these expenses.

Regards, makingourway