[Today’s run: 3.4 miles]
It is that time of year again, time to figure out what the taxes look like.
When we pay bills we throw the receipts into “the basket”. So this time of year I go through the basket and make a piles of bills, receipts, birthday cards, whatever is in the basket, a pile for every month of the year.
Then I put the 2018 stuff in folders and put the folders in the file cabinet. The folders I used this year, taken randomly from the pile, were previously used in 2000 and 2001. 2016 was retired to a box in the garage. Theoretically there is a box in the garage that I should be emptying out and stack the folders in the reuse pile. I didn’t do that part yet.
While I go through the basket I separate out tax related stuff. Now I have most of my tax documents in one place.
2 replies on “Working the basket”
We did ours and didn’t deduct anything owing to the higher standard deduction. In 2017 we gave double our usual donations owing to this change (and paid as much property tax ahead of time as was allowed). We support a dog rescue and I wrote them that 2018 could be a dry year for charities in general owing to federal tax changes so be careful budgeting. (I personally didn’t support the tax changes but I’m in the minority.)
Regardless, less paperwork for you now.
Less paperwork, that’s true! I think our deductions are well under the new standard deduction. I don’t know why that translates into a higher tax bill, maybe they upped the rates a bit when they increased the deduction?
I trimmed down my post a bit, cut out the percentages part. I was putting the data into TurboTax and it became obvious that my “rule of thumb” is complete trash.