Save Money on Tax Preparations

Read these tips!

Tax time is stressful for everyone, tax payers and tax preparers. Try to make preparing and paying for taxes a little less stressful by practicing the following throughout the year.

Receipts

Save all receipts throughout the year. This means everything – from gas receipts to meal receipts and everything in between. Retain all receipts and canceled check or bank statements in a folder or container marked with the current tax year.

Accounting Programs

Obtain an accounting program such as QuickBooks, or something similar. This does not have to be the newest or updated version as an older version of the program will be cheaper and will do the job just fine. Making a spreadsheet in a program such as Excel will also work, but will require more time.

Spreadsheets

Set up the program or spreadsheet to separate all expense individually, i.e. gas, diesel, meals, groceries, school expenses, utilities, telephone, medical expenses, etc. Any gas or diesel receipts that are entered should also show the number of gallons purchased.

Enter Everything

Enter all receipts, canceled checks and income into the program or on the spreadsheet. Add notes into each entry, such as “Jake’s school registration,” “4.325 gallons diesel,” “Kathy’s cell phone,” or “Christmas gift for Susan.” There are businesses or individuals that will provide this service, and less money will be spent hiring them to do it, then will be spent having the tax preparer to go through everything, or missing a deduction.

Print and Save

After all receipts and canceled checks are entered, print the spreadsheet with all expenses listed. Check the printed spreadsheet for duplicate entries. Remove any duplicate entries or mistakes that have been made, and reprint a final draft. If something is questionable, highlight it or circle it, so that it stands out. Save the spreadsheet onto a CD or DVD, and label it with the current tax year.

To the Tax Preparer

Provide both the printed list and the CD or DVD to the tax preparer for completion of the current year’s taxes. The tax preparer will now be able to enter information onto the tax return by either the printed version of the spreadsheet, or right off of the CD or DVD. This will save both time and money for the tax preparer and the tax payer.

Individuals and Businesses

Everyone should do this, whether they are an individual with limited income or a business with multiple incomes, as it not only provides an accurate record for each and every tax year, but also saves time and money during tax preparation. Tax preparers charge extra if they have to go through receipts and calculate totals. There is also always the change that a deduction may be found, that would normally have been overlooked.
Try these tips to save time, money and to avoid stress during this tax season, and every one thereafter.

Want to Save Money on Cable? Here's a Useful Trick

This week I learned an important lesson about how to save money when negotiating service rates with the cable company and other vendors. As I am in the process of moving to my new job, I have had a couple of days off and got around to doing some things I have been planning to do for a long time. One of these tasks was to get our cable bill reduced.

We get our cable TV and broadband Internet from Comcast and our monthly bill comes out to about $160 including all taxes, fees & the cost of our HD DVR. We are very happy with the level of service we receive, but the price is just too steep for us. I know many PF bloggers are all about saving money by cutting off cable, but for us this is a complete non-starter. We enjoy our HD channels, HBO & our fast broadband connection and have no intention of giving them up. Since that is the case, the best we can hope to do is to reduce our cable charges as much as possible.

Early in the week I called Comcast customer service and asked for a price reduction. They essentially gave me a resounding "get lost" response. They offered us a $10 reduction in our monthly bill, if we were to subscribe to their triple play service, i.e. buy cable, Internet and phone service from them as a bundle. This was actually a pretty good deal, since not only would we be able to reduce our monthly fee by $10 but subscribing to triple play would mean that we could cancel our land-line phone service and save another $20 a month. However, after my wife and I discussed it we decided that we would rather stick with a traditional land-line. One of our main reasons for this is that a typical land-line works even when the power is out, while a cable phone would only be able to operate as long as its backup power was available (8 hours according to the Comcast representative).

Back to the main story. My challenge was to get a lower price for our current service package. Since I already called customer service and they turned me down flat, I decided to call the disconnection department. That made life a whole lot easier. The agent on the other end of the line was very receptive to my requests. Within minutes I got a $40 discount on our rate effective for 12 months, without having to sign up for any additional services. In addition, the promotional price did not require any contract and we are free to add, change or cancel service at any time. That call saved us about $500 over the next year. As an added bonus, I got the customer service agent to send us a technician, free of charge, to move one of our cable connection spots to another side of the house. This normally costs $150.

So here is the lesson: if you want to get a discount, don't call the customer service center. Talk to the folks that really matter: the department responsible for customer retention & account terminations.

I put this lesson to another good use later in the week by calling AT&T Wireless regarding my cell phone plan. My employer picks up the tab for my cell phone, but I wanted a new Blackberry free of charge. The folks at the disconnection department got pretty close, after the regular customer service agents turned me down flat. I haven't closed the deal yet, I want to make sure that my employer is willing to pick up the difference on my new phone before I make the purchase, but one thing is clear: if you talk to the folks that are tasked with keeping customers, your chances for getting what you need improve dramatically.