Tax time is nothing to sing the blues about!
Last night was our tax appointment, and believe it or not it’s a fairly pain-free process for us. We were in and out in an hour!
Prior to starting the farm we always did our own taxes. But once we had to start filling out that Schedule F we enlisted professional help. It’s worth every penny for us to not have to spend time keeping up on things like tax law changes or depreciation schedules on our breeding stock.
There are 2 things I do to make tax time go easier. One is to keep an “income tax” file folder, and during the year throw any documents we’ll need at tax time into this file. Things like the kids’ school registrations, property tax statements, vehicle registration papers.
The other is to keep a list on the computer of every paper document we need to take with us to our tax appointment – the things I just listed plus which banks we receive interest from or pay interest to, which investments we receive dividend statements from, our mileage log for the farm truck, etc. I did this a few years ago, and now each year I just pull up the prior year’s list, update it, gather the listed documents, and go.
The final thing that makes tax time so easy is our QuickBooks program. I just print our accountant a Profit & Loss Statement, a Balance Sheet, and the detail on any assets we sold or purchased during the year.
We sing a happy song at tax time…
1 year ago:
You sound very well organized.I’ll bet this little gal would be a whiz at Guitar Hero!