Whether you’ve already filed or are procrastinating until the deadline, a majority of us don’t necessarily enjoy the process of filing our taxes. Here are a few tips to make tax season go a little smoother:

Set up tax files. Create space in your filing system to store tax-related documents that accumulate throughout the year. For example, create a hanging folder called “taxes” with subfolders to collect paperwork related to medical expenses, charitable donations, 1099s, W-2s, etc. At the end of the year, your paperwork will already be categorized and ready to be given to your accountant or entered into your tax-preparation software.

Do an annual purge. Tax time is a great time to get rid of old statements, bills, receipts, and other paperwork that you no longer need to keep for your records. Don’t know what you need to keep? Refer to IRS Publication 552 for individual record keeping and IRS Publication 583 for small business record keeping guidelines.

Go paper-lite. Although it’s difficult to go completely paperless with taxes, there are definitely ways to cut down on paper and ink. Consider saving statements as PDFs and submitting your return via e-file instead of paper. Burn a cd of the electronic files you used in creating your return instead of printing them all to keep with your paper tax return files.

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For help with these tips or another organizing project, please contact us!