The Professional Expert

Taxes – Doing them yourself

Disclaimer: This is entry not intended to offer official tax advice. Please see www.irs.gov or contact a certified tax professional with any questions or for specific instructions. 

If you are going to do your taxes yourself, you will need the forms. There are several different versions of the tax form.  We’ll talk about the 1040EZ, the 1040A, and the 1040.

You can get the forms at the local library or other government building, such as City Hall.  You can also get them on line at www.irs.gov .  They have a booklet that explains which form you should use.

Lets start simple and work our way to the more complex.

The 1040EZ is for the basic situation, as follows:

You are single or married filing jointly
Your taxable income is less than $100,000
You are less than 65 years old and not blind at the end of 2007
You have no dependants
You had only wages, salaries, tips, taxable scholarship or fellowships, unemployment compensation or Alaska Permanent Fund income and taxable interest less than $1,500.

If all of these apply to you, then you can probably use 1040EZ.  This is the simplest of the tax forms.  Be sure to read the instructions to make sure this is the right form for you, there may be special circumstances that apply to your situation.

The next level of complexity is the 1040A.

This form applies to most people who do not itemize deductions and have a taxable income less than $100,000.
The criteria are pretty detailed and more than we can spell out here.

The 1040 form is for the most complex taxes.

This is for people that itemize deductions, received income from non-taxable bonds, earned income overseas, or any number of special situations. 

As you can imagine, there are pages and pages of stuff in this one.

Be sure to read through the instructions to be sure you are using the right form.

There are also state forms and (in some cases) local forms.  You can get these at your library as well.  After you have paid taxes once, they will send the forms to you. 

If you live in Alaska, Florida, Nevada, South Dakota, Texas, Washington and Wyoming there is no state income tax.  Two others, New Hampshire and Tennessee, tax only dividend and interest income.

You can also find out about state and local taxes by searching for  “state tax forms.”  Several sites come up. I liked the LSU tax site, http://www.lib.lsu.edu/govdocs/taxes.html. They have links to each state’s tax information. 

Remember, they need to be postmarked or submitted by midnight on April 15.

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