Tax Day (give me my money back!)

It's been only 3 years since I started doing my own tax. I am not even sure how I did my first one, I don't even know where the report is. I always use a guidance program for tax report, particularly turbotax simply because that was the only program I knew about.

After the last year's tax report, I'm starting to realize the importance of keeping all my records with me, specifically my receipts. It has been difficult for me to estimate how much I spent for medical and educational purposes. Since it has been only recent that I started keeping track of my expenses, I had to travel back to 2017 to realize where I spent my money on.

First, I called several places, especially medical offices for the record of payments. It was somewhat difficult to track things down because I have been to so many different medical offices last year but it was doable (I'm so glad that I'm doing my receipt journal since I need to keep track of things). I went to pharmacy and showed my ID to get the record of last year's medications and payments. I called my insurance to get a report of last year's records.

Then, all the forms. I put all the forms together in a file organizer and have them together so I have an access to the forms I need for tax report.

The report. I would say that turbotax made it easy for me to follow the steps (although I'm not sure if I'm doing it right). So it took me about 3 hours to finish the report. I did the PLUS option since I wanted to be able to access my report in the future. I also noticed that if you use Ebates and haven't started using any tax report services, you should look into other options since they offer a pretty good return rate.

Anyways, one of the things I will definitely do in the future is to hire an accountant to check my taxes. I was listening to a podcast episode called 'How to Optimize Your Taxes and Make the System Work for You with Shane Mason' from Journey to Launch by Jamila Souffrant. Although the episode itself was not that relevant to my tax situation, but it was still nice to learn more about taxes and that there are actually good accountants out there (I had a horrible experience with my mother's tax accountant in the past). So when I actually get to the point where I can afford a personal accountant, I would like to learn about more about taxes and how shitty of a job I've been doing with my taxes, haha.

So this year's tax season is over for all of us and I'm glad it is. I will not look forward to doing it again next year but I am excited about improvements I will make next year and learning about taxes along the way. Cheers to those of you guys who waited till the last day to do the taxes just like me and we will do a better job next year!