Money Advice Guide

Many people just assume their accountant will cut their taxes as much as possible. To get the biggest benefit from them, you need to be a bit more proactive.

Make Your Accountant Your Best Friend

Accountants tend to come in two types. The first is a reactive accountant, one that waits for you to send in your financial information and then prepares your taxes. The second asks you to come in and fill in annoying questionnaires about your life and so on. You want to go with this second accountant.

To truly save money on your taxes, you want a proactive accountant. A proactive accountant recognizes that the best way to cut tax bills is to plan ahead. They do not want to see you in April when it is time to prepare last years taxes. Instead, they want to see you in January every year to have a lengthy discussion about your finances, changes you foresee in your life that year and your plans for the future. Once they have this information, they can give you definitive direction on steps to take to cut down on your taxes.

Despite what you may have heard, accountants are just as human as you and I. If you don’t make any effort to get your tax strategy sorted out, they probably will not either. If they give you advice and you don’t follow it, you have no one to blame but yourself. To get the biggest benefit you must avoid procrastination. They are going to save you thousands, if not tens of thousands, of dollars, so do your part.

So, how do you find a proactive accountant? You can look around the net or ask friends. You will never really know what you have, however, until you meet with one. When you do, you need to ask them what steps they will take to handle your taxes. If they make no mention of a review of your finances for the purpose of making recommendations, it is time to move to the next one.

To get the biggest benefit from your tax professional, you need two things. First, find a proactive one. Second, follow their directives immediately.

Richard A. Chapo is with BusinessTaxRecovery.com - providing information on taxes.

Tags: accountant, irs, planning, save money, tax, tax returns, taxesaccountant, irs, planning, save money, tax, tax returns, taxes

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Excerpted from the new book, “How to Do Space Age Work with a Stone Age Brain” TM

Every year American companies lose millions of dollars in productivity to employees who end up taking their own personal time off to do their taxes. Whether you are filing by paper from just one W-2 or running multiple enterprises, streamlining now will pay off this year and in future.

Applying these proven Tax Time Tune-Up tips will save you time, frustration and could even save you money. Even if you only reduce your stress level - it’s worth it! Start today by getting an archive box or file crate to hold all your tax related files and forms.

If you have a good filing system, but you keep getting bogged down in old records: Every January, pull last year’s financial files, any business related expenses, proof of income and all tax related items. While you are taking old files out, make the replacement new file folders for all of your regular home and business or personal financial and legal documents.

If you have no functioning filing system for your home (or business) I recommend you sort out your papers for tax and archives after setting up the FileSolutions TM color-coded pre-printed file kit that fits your current filing needs at http://www.organizer-extraordinaire.com

That way you’ll have the right place to put each item as you handle it. I use the Home and Small Business FileSolutions TM kits in my own business, which makes it easy for me to guarantee your satisfaction.

Tax Preparation Software: By using tax preparation software, you can finish your federal and state returns in about 90 minutesif you’ve completed the steps above. The software helps you find deductions, does the math for you and tells you what you owe or what your refund will be.

Use tax preparation software matched to your situation and financial software; there are several available (TaxCut, TurboTax, etc.).

I use TurboTax (by the makers of Quicken) to do my own taxes. If I can do it - so can you! Then, I have a tax professional check my return for way less money than it would have cost me to have my business and personal taxes done by a tax professional.

Good News/Bad News: If your Adjusted Gross Income for 2005 is less than $28,000, or you qualify for Earned Income Tax Credit - go to http://www.taxfreedom.com and use Intuit’s TurboTax program online for FREE!

Online tax-preparation sites keep improving their do-it-yourself tax tools, ease of preparation and regular or e-filing expertise. These offer the same process as desktop software does but, it is all done online. After the products fo through your return for errors (and suggest possible tax-savings), you can print your completed return or file it electronically.

The IRS likes electronically filed returns so much, in fact, that it’s set up specific developers that provide free prep and filing to certain demographic groups. Go to www.irs.gov to see if you qualify.

Some tax-preparation web sites are cheaper than their desktop counterparts. But they don’t always have the most complete version of tax help that the desktop software does.

There can also be additional costs of state filing services, sometimes at more expense than the federal counterparts. A recent PC Magazine rated the top three Tax Web Sites as: TurboTax (

Tags: April 15, finance, home office, organize, reduce stress, save money, save time, small business, taxApril 15, finance, home office, organize, reduce stress, save money, save time, small business, tax

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