How To Avoid Stress While Filing Taxes?
With April approaching fast, we begin to fret about filing the taxes. It is believed to be the most time taking and complex task. But gone are the days when you had to file bundles of form to avoid tax penalties and passed the entire month of April contemplating how to file your taxes? However, with everything going online, filing taxes is not a daunting task anymore. Here are few tips that are sure to help you filing the taxes easily:
1. Organize all your records
It is the worst thing when you have to spend time looking out for tax related documents. Therefore, organizing financial records is very important. It must be done continuously to avoid mistakes. You should save the copies of all the receipts and pay stubs or even scan and save them in your system. This will help you to claim all exemptions and calculate the final taxable income. The list of relevant documents can easily be found online or on the IRS website to make the complex task simpler.
2. Don't delay everything up to 14th April
Many of us have a habit of leaving the things for the last day. But filing taxes should not be one of those tasks. If you leave it to last minute, you might make a mistake in either filing the form or claiming exemptions in the haste. Even if you are taking a professional's help, he may be either too busy with other commitments or may charge exorbitant fee. Even the extension requests need to be filed before the April due date to avoid penalties and high interest rates.
3. Take professional help
If you are too busy with other commitments or feel that filing forms and taxes is not your cup of tea, you can certainly get into touch with a professional tax service to help you filing your taxes. They even help you make most of the deductions and help you save big bucks. They will not only help you in filling the forms, but will also file taxes on your behalf. However, you need to use all your prudence while selecting a tax professional. Check their background, reputation and experience in consideration before trusting them with all your financial and personal details.
4. Trust IRS website
IRS has taken several steps to simplify the procedure which include a very user-friendly website where you can download form and get hundreds of tips and instructions about filing taxes. It even runs a toll free tele-service to assist the tax payers.
5. File online
Filing an online return is much more accurate than the traditional paper return. It will not only save lots of time but also decreases the return time from almost six weeks to just 10 days. However you need to very careful while filing an e- return as wrong information will lead to its automatic rejection. Two common mistakes made by people filing the tax forms are incorrect Social Security Number or tax calculations.
Even if you have missed claiming an exemption or made an error in filing the return and have noticed it well in time, you can amend your report. If the fears of making your return vulnerable to checking have stopped you from amending your return, it is high time you should know that IRS doesn't check returns by this criterion.
