Meet Doug Collins

MY STORY

I have been building businesses from home since 1998.

I started my first online business in 1998 while I was still working in the corporate world. The old home-office photo beside this story comes from that time.

In 2010, a major corporate merger changed the direction of my career. Rather than relocate, I took the severance package and moved into full-time self-employment.

That transition taught me something important. I had relied heavily on tax preparers and assumed that handing over my information was enough. Over time, I realized they could only work with the records and details I had tracked, understood, and provided.

Receipts, statements, emails, mileage, expenses, and other details could easily become scattered throughout the year. If I could not find or explain the information later, someone else could not fix that for me. 

I became much more deliberate about recordkeeping, bookkeeping, and how my business activity connected to tax filing. That experience became part of the foundation for my book and, eventually, Home Business Tax Secrets.

WHY THE RECORDS COME FIRST

Good tax preparation starts with the records behind the return.

As the author of The Home-Based Business Guide to Write Off Almost Anything and through more than six years of volunteer tax preparation work, I have seen how quickly filing becomes harder when the records behind the return are missing, scattered, or difficult to explain.

The tax return comes at the end. The work starts much earlier, with the records you keep and the details you can explain during the year.

That is why my work focuses on stronger records, practical bookkeeping habits, and better preparation before filing begins.