Tuesday, April 11, 2006

I learned something!

I'm sure everyone has their taxes long-finished at this point, but I thought I would pass along something I learned recently yesterday. If you are using fill-in PDF forms to do your taxes, save them to your computer before you start your work. If you save them to your hard drive after you fill them in, when you re-open them they will be...wait for it....blank. If you print them off right after you fill them in this is not a big deal, but I wanted to take a break and then double-check them (not to mention save a copy for my records).

I like doing my own taxes. It's a few hours a year, you get to see what your financial picture is really like, and you save a few hundred bucks on a preparer. I even like doing the math. I'm sure I don't have to describe the sinking feeling I got from getting to do the whole thing over because I saved the forms wrong, but if my experience can benefit even one truly last-minute filer this season, it's well worth it.

1 comment:

Jeremy said...

I do my taxes through an online preparation service. That way, I can work on them as my info comes through and not worry about saving or losing my work. I also have access to all previous tax years, so I don't have to worry about hunting those down if and when I need them.

Sure, it's $30 - but that's peace of mind for me, who is notorious for misplacing items.