How can I file my personal taxes by myself?
First thing I’ll say is don’t fill out the forms by yourself, by hand. Everyone I know who has filled out papers by hand has been audited, because at a minimum they have messed up some calculations.
If you’re going to file it by yourself
the first thing you need to know is that you need to gather all your personal tax documents. Most of the time these are mailed to you, well, I should say they’re either mailed to you or you get an email from whoever saying the tax document is ready for you to download online. So you’re going to gather all that information, mortgage statements, charitable contributions and interest statements. Do you have an account like a Charles Schwab, some sort of investment account? There’s gonna be a 1099 B that you get from them. It’s impossible or really boring for me to list every single form on this video. Most people have until the end of January to the middle of February to get you those forms.
Once you have all your papers collected
you’re going to want to use a software, because that is going to save you a lot of time. If you don’t have any sort of business income, which would be paid on a 1099 or a 1099 miscellaneous, your taxes are pretty straight forward.
There’s not very many strategies, if any, at this point in 2023, where you would have some additional opportunity. The tax code is really written for business owners, so you’ll get the information needed and use the software. It will prompt you for answers and to fill in information from your papers.
A word of caution
If you do choose to go the route of going to one of these tax like sweat shops, as I might refer to them. I don’t want to disparage any specific companies, but sometimes they have people dancing in costumes on the side of a street. Probably not the type of people I’m going to trust with tax knowledge. In most cases they are training their people on how to use software. They’re not really being trained on tax knowledge. I personally would just recommend sticking with software.
You’re going to save yourself a premium
because you don’t have to pay someone to then just walk you through the same software you could have used on your own. But if you’re going to do it yourself, don’t print off the forms and fill them out by hand. That is just asking to be audited. Use the software.
Keep in mind the first check that your return goes through is a computer check with the IRS and they have all your income information already, so make sure all income is reported. If your return doesn’t match what their system says it is automatically audited based on their statistics. Keep that in mind when filing personal taxes by yourself.
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