Tax Write-Off Myth #6: Tax Software Will Do All This For You

This is one I have actually heard many times. If you have all your business’s records of income and expenses well organized in a business template by expense category, totaled and ready to go, then you can use a Tax preparation software, like a TurboTax.

But without well organized information tax software is useless. If you haven’t been keeping track on a monthly basis and you just toss your expense receipts into a pile or leave everything until tax season.. this is when the overwhelming CATCH UP and CLEANED UP starts!

To compound the issue, beside the amount of clean up work needed during tax season think about all the expenses that have been missed because of lack of knowledge on what can and cannot be a write-off throughout the year.

What about bad receipt management? Maybe you lost a few receipts between the seats in the car or misplaced them. What about that bad tax advice?! Or no advice on what do keep, claim and extra things to add-in that you never thought of?

This is why I spend so much time encouraging others to be educated on home-based business write-offs, understand how to easily get organized, keep good records and when tax season rolls around it's all so simple. 

I shared my 20+ years experience in my book titled The Home-Based Business Guide To Write-Off Almost Anything and created the course The Home Business Tax Secrets Course & Productivity System to simplify things for those in home business.  

Once you have it all together in an organized system you can then go into the Tax Software and do your own taxes. If doing your own taxes is not for you then hire good tax person who understands home-based business. The information you will be handing them will be a clean organized Excel spreadsheet that makes their job EASY. They will do a better job for you, and most likely charge you less!

So to say that “tax software” does everything for you… is a Myth. To believe this myth you can be assured it's costing thousands in extra taxes annually.

In this podcast recording I was interview on the Rock Your Business Podcast where I shared many ideas that might be of help for you, including:

• Importance of tax planning
• Business use of home expenses
• What to do with your tax refund
• Vehicle expenses and record keeping
• Red flags for an audit

This is Myth #6 in a 7 part series:

• Myth #1: My Accountant Does That For Me At Tax Time
• Myth #2: Can’t Claim Tax Write-Offs No Business Income
• Myth #3: The Government Wants Me to Pay More Taxes
• Myth #4: If You Claim It, You Will Get Audited
• Myth #5: You Can Use Google To Find All Your Answers
• Myth #6: Tax Software Will Do All This For You
• Myth #7: Direct Sales (Network Marketing) Is Not A Real Business