Jesus H Christ Popken, way to depress the Hell out of me.

Um maybe Im a tax noobie, but how the hell are you supposed to start doing your taxes when you dont have any of the forms yet?

Start Thinking About Filing Your 2006 Taxes

"Ben Popken" really sucks when you put it into an anagram program... you just get nothing.

@Falconfire:

You can download the federal forms for the 2006 fiscal year from the irs.gov website, and the state forms from the government website for your state.

I get that The Truth but seriously, most of my thinking actually involves having my W2 forms and stuff with me, the year isnt even over yet and thus I continue to make purchase that can be used as deductions and such.

Mid Jan I would say is the best time. You should have a better indication of what you can deduct and such once the year is over.

Those of us who are independent contractors and have to pre-pay taxes from our [untaxed] earnings throughout the year already know pretty well what our total income will be for the year, as well as most (if not all) of our deductions.

So it at least makes sense for us to start early, because it just means less thinking when it gets down to crunch time.

The point of my original post rounding up all those posts was that you still have a month to do a lot of those things that will ultimately affect your tax return next year. For example, it's a lot easier to sell a losing position in your stock investments (to offset gains) right now than in a few weeks when you have to deal with (or strenuously avoiding) your family during the holidays. :)

The award for most worthless post goes to this one...

How can you work on your taxes for next year when a) you don't have the W2 for this year yet and b) the year hasn't ended and there are still one more month's worth of earnings to be made?

Basically, you're telling us to sharpen our pencils?

Sometime in February, we buy the Canadian tax program - It used to be called Quick Tax, but we think it changed its name a year or so ago. By mid March at the latest, usually a week after we get the last form, Mr. and Ms. No49 file our taxes. And because we e-file them, we usually get a return within a month. Both of us also have a way to get into Revenue Canada website and are able to track the return process. Makes less stress for us and by filing early, if we owe money, we don't have to pay interest on it.

Sometime within the next month Ms. No49 is going to start playing with last years tax program to get an idea of what we might be getting back. All she does is plug in the information for this year in and it gives a guestimate. Once we get all the forms in, she plugs it all in and we file immediately.

Mr. No49 also has an extra amount deducted from his paycheck every pay period to go specifically towards anything that might not have been covered with normal tax deductions. This has saved his butt a couple of times because of errors in accounting by his employer.

Ms. No49 also likes to know what the probably amounts of tax credits she'll be earning during the year. "Low Income" Canadians get a GST rebate 4 times a year and families can also get a "baby bonus" or "child tax credit." Those with children under 6 also get a daycare amount of $100 per kid.

By filing early, we avoid a complication our neighbour had. It was months before she saw a penny of her returns and she was hurting for money.

We also use direct deposit. It means the money comes to us pdq and on the day promised.

It's only useless if you don't do anything but use the short form and gather information from W-2s. For those of us who itemize deductions, it's a good time to think about getting paperwork together, making our last charitable donations of the year, adding up unreimbursed medical expenses and having them ready to go (we get a deduction this year because I had surgery and we have crap medical insurance), and just generally doing whatever can be done before the W-2's come in so we can file quickly when they do. Otherwise, the job stretches over weeks, and so does the time to refund. The sooner we can get our money back, the better.

Hey Ben: "Restive" does not mean "restful," but rather "fidgety" and "balky". Just a friendly correction from the editorial nitpicker. :-)