Wednesday, January 28, 2009

TAX prep organization

I promise to take some pictures of the boy and post soon, but in the meantime I'm doing our taxes. I want to tell you a couple things not everyone is aware of. If you do the long form you get a sales tax deduction. The standard was $1505 last year, only $1200 this year. I don't know about you guys but with our huge sales tax we definitely paid over $1200 in tax over the course of the year---and if you save all your receipts (like we do!) you can deduct the EXACT amount you actually paid...something that works out to be fair, who knew? I love it! ALSO if you spend over a certain percentage of your adjusted gross income in medical costs you can deduct those too. I don't know the % this year but Turbo Tax popped up a dollar amount for us and we actually qualified again this year. SO to make it easy for next year I got a notebook to keep track. I'm writing each appointment and how much we pay out of pocket. Right now I am scouring through our records to figure out exactly what we paid in '08. What you need to keep track of is: monthly insurance premiums, co-pays, $ to doctor, dentist, eye doctor, physical therapist, lab fees, prescriptions, contact lens solutions (not the lenses or glasses though), hearing aids and associated supplies, did you travel to a doctor---mileage, parking fee, ferry fee and tolls; did you need to get a hotel? You can claim $50 per night-----we spent $200 at the hotel by Swedish last summer--that included the hospital's surgery discount, but still the $50 helps. Also any hospital, clinic, rehab facility costs.
SOOOO keep a good record of this stuff as it happens so next January you aren't scrambling and next APril you don't throw up your hands and say forget it-------you are giving away money you don't have to spend!!!
Hope you guys get lots of money refunded!!

1 comment:

Julie said...

You should get Quicken. It can track all of those expenses for you and then it downloads into Turbo Tax. We haven't done the download thing, but that is what it says it does!