Tax Tips & Stories: How To Deal With The Tax Man
It’s something we usually just worry about once a year and has the same effect on us as that annual visit we make to the health practitioner. Care to guess what it is? It’s the yearly tax filing process, of course! Unlike making money and learning how to spend it wisely, learning how to keep more of it away from the tax man tends to be one of the more overlooked aspects of personal finance. It’s actually one of the less sexy elements of finance, with topics that are typically considered dry, technical, or even boring.
Regardless of what you think about tax management, it’s an important part of proper money management. The more of our income and investments we can preserve and keep away from other entities, the greater our foundation for monetary growth. We therefore use this section to place emphasis on the subject of taxes: from tax planning and preparation to our choices for tax resources, software and professional services.
What concerns do you face when tax season rolls around? How ready are you when the month of April knocks on your door? Taxes take a big bite out of our income and earnings, so what steps can we take to minimize its inevitable effects year after year? Our articles aim to shed more light on tax issues.
Our H&R Block Online Premium Giveaway is back! During tax season, we often hold tax related giveaways (in fact, we had an H&R Block tax software offer sometime ago which was well received). This is becoming somewhat of an annual event, which I can certainly appreciate! So if you’re looking for a tax program to [...]
Are you saving for retirement? Consider the tax ramifications. It’s painfully obvious that we have officially entered into a period in which many people work far past the age of retirement — whether it’s because they actually want to or because they have to. With people living to be much older nowadays, “retirement” tends to [...]
It’s the time of year to think about working on your taxes. I just started looking into mine and like any other year, it’s going to be “fun”. Oh Joy. But I expect it to be more “fun” for us this year, given that our small business projects are now our dominant sources of income [...]
It’s not just how much you make that matters, but also how much you actually keep. There are but few words in the financial vocabulary that strike fear in me, and TAX is one of them. The annual chore of preparing and organizing my financial documents that comes around February or March never fails to [...]
It’s time once again to check on the tax tables to see whether there have been adjustments. And for 2012, there are indeed some updates, although for this year, they have been pegged to inflation and not the result of policy. Given that this is a presidential election year, the government’s stance is probably to [...]
Which tax events trigger adjustments to your tax situation? A lot of decisions we make in our daily lives have an impact on our taxes. Some of these changes yield beneficial credits, while others increase the amount we need to pay to the IRS. It’s probably good to know what kind of events may trigger [...]
While there are only two things in life that are certain (death and taxes, of course), the “tax industry” wants to ensure that you keep on living. The IRS wants taxpayers to hang around as long as possible in order to ensure an ongoing, steady flow of taxes into the government. After all, the IRS [...]
I thought I’d go over some of the contribution limits for the 401(k). This is one aspect of the tax code that hasn’t changed over the past few years, but let’s take a closer look anyway. It’s always good to review some of the rules behind tax efficient investing for retirement. We can expect any [...]
Because of financial reasons, fewer employers are offering Flexible Spending Accounts (aka Flexible Spending Arrangements or FSAs). If you are fortunate to still have one, then you may want to hear about the IRS changes that impact eligible expenses for such accounts in 2011. The new statutory changes apply to covering over-the-counter drugs and medicines. [...]