Week 6 Project

We're meeting with our accountant this week to prepare our tax returns, so this week's project is to get all our stuff in order. I like to do them as early as possible as we have always gotten a refund, and call me greedy but I want my money.

We've received all the documents we needed - W2, bank interest statements etc.
I got all our bank statements organized today and have gone through them to identify any checks that would be deductible.  Not many but we have a couple.
I've gone through my receipt folder and we have quite a few repair expenses on my husband's car, some basic office supply stuff, and a few charitable contributions (both goods and $).
I've downloaded the AMEX summary to find any deductible items on there.

Tonight I need to figure out the cost of my husband's car insurance for the year and our total cost for our second phone line and internet access, since those also qualify as business expenses. I need to figure out the value of the goods we donated. Once I have all that I can put it all in my usual spreadsheet to give to our accountant when we meet.  It makes it so much easier to review everything with her this way, and then we can use more of the meeting to discuss bigger questions of our finances for this year, like making sure we adjust our withholdings correctly to make sure we maximize my husband's earnings to take care of our short fall.