I’ve finally gotten okay at tax preparation. It only took 49 years.
My system is simple. When I get paid, a third goes into an account I can’t touch. That money gets sent to the IRS quarterly.
I hook my credit card and banking accounts to an online service which I review at the end of each month, correcting categorization and labeling. Whenever I spend money related to the act of doing business I also save a digital copy of the receipt in a folder, in the cloud.
As tax day approaches I pull everything together in a spreadsheet and clump expenses based on self employment categories. My tax preparer is patient with me as we work through it all over the course of an hour. She’s great.
