Yikes. Tax time is upon us again. I know because in the last week, I’ve received all manner of tax statements, requests for tax statements, and warnings about requests for tax statements. Not to mention, estimates of taxes owed. Ouch, not fun! 

For most of my life, this time of year was easy because I’m a maniacal organizer and my life (and therefore, finances) were pretty simple. But layer on two kids, education costs, a refinanced mortgage, and a small business, and things get out of hand. Despite my best (and still generally maniacal) efforts, I’ve fallen behind.

I think I need the discipline of revisiting my “systems”- and we got a bunch of good ideas from all of our organizers. I think they’ll help me and hope you find them helpful, too.

Avoid the April 15th Headache! Use a software program such as Quicken or Microsoft Money to track your expenses throughout the year - then, when its’ tax time, it will be very easy to print out a report for your CPA. If you tend to collect lots of receipts, use a program like Neat Receipts to scan them in, and let it maintain your records for you - it is IRS approved, and you can link it to automatically download into your chosen software program.
- Amy Bradbury, Mosaic Business Solutions, LLC, www.mosaicbusiness.net  

Create a file folder labeled “Papers for 2007 Tax Return” so you have a place to put all those important tax-related documents (W-2, mortgage interest statement, etc.) as they arrive in January’s mail. No more scrambling to find the papers you need when it’s time to do your taxes.
- Susan Kousek of Balanced Spaces®, LLC, www.balancedspaces.com

Don’t forget the flip side - safely getting rid of the papers you DON’T need! 

As a rule, I advise you to get rid of anything that you can get a copy of if you find you need it. …It is important to remember that once you reconcile a credit card account, you only need to save the receipt if it is needed for taxes and it is over $25.00….Unless you have a good system for retrieving information, keeping too much can be counter productive.  MORE IS NOT ALWAYS BETTER!
- Amy Goldberg-Cutler, The Runaround

 Go thru your filing cabinets: shred old, non important papers, update and make sure current files are easy to get to, create a colored manilla folder for 2007 taxes when the end of the documents arrive, box up old important files by year and put them away out of prime space in the filing cabinet.
- Bonnie Blas, The Organizer

Quick Shredding: No time to shred? Find a plastic bin like a garbage can or plastic container, dump papers in, pour water or bleach over the paper and let sit for 2-3 days or until the paper is in a pulp like state. Dispose of in bags in garbage or recycling. Paper will no longer be readable.
- Jaime Vanderlaan, Dutch Girl Organizing

It’s only Jan 15th, so you’ve got three months to get yourself in order - why not start now?