Taxes and claiming things

DH and I are making a better effort and saving receipts and claiming items on our taxes for next year, but my question is how do I know what I can claim and what receipts should I keep for sure? What are some things that I would be surprised that I can claim?

Well in Texas you can now claim a certain percentage of the tax you pay in everyday life. So I would keep all receipts then add up the tax at the end of the year and see which is more, the calculator estimator thingy or your receipts.


I also know you can claim the cost of filing the year before and I believe your tax software fees.

I would keep ALL receipts. If you can get ahold of Quickbooks software, it is such a breeze to use. When you enter the receipts in the software, it requires that you designate what account (eg: fuels, utilities, postage, office supplies, etc) At the end of the year you will have all of your expense totals organized and ready for tax filing. I always file on turbotax online and it pretty much guides me through the whole process and asks if I have paid for certain expenses. I hope I've helped a little. :-D

On that sales tax thing, it automatically estimated it for us based on our income. That might not be the most accurate, but it worked for us.

You can deduct all of the things that you donate to Goodwill or other places like that.
You can deduct memberships to the Zoo, Museums, Arboretum.

If you have a home office and it is dedicated solely for the purpose of working (you can't have it combined with a guestroom or anything) you can deduct a lot of that and also depreciate the cost of the square footage.

What about continuing education things? Like if you go to Vegas to attend a convention for your profession...that would be, right?

Also equipment that is used only for your job -- your scrubs, stethescopes, etc.

Teri -- I believe the way it works is, if the continuing ed. is linked/beneficial to your professional job, yes. But not if say you decide to take a class at Richland studying landscaping just for fun, when in real life you're a computer programmer....

oh definitely...yes, you can't just switch fields. But, that is why things like doctor conventions are held in Maui...so that they can be written off and the docs will still come.

If you use turbo tax software, it guides you. It doesn't just give you blank tax forms to fill out (unless you want to do it that way), but it asks you questions. It fills in the information on the appropriate form. It' really good software.

Also, using Quicken, back account software, is great too. You can have all your various accounts in one file, checking, savings, credit card, loans, and more. You can categorize your spending, however you wish to. You can run all sorts of different reports to see how much you are spending in a category, in a time period, and more, seach for a specific transaction, setup a budget, get budget reports to see how well you are sticking to the budget. There are many, many aspects to help manage money. I've used this for many, many years and am very willing to help anyone understand how to use it.