For the past 7 or 8 years I have used an accountant to prepare my taxes. The reason I switched over from turbo tax or some other do it yourself method was because when I got married The Wife’s taxes were a little bit more complicated. Before I got married all I had was a small W-2 income and my student loan deductions…ah the easy days! Then I went ahead and got married, The Wife, was and still is, an independent sales representative (1099 income). I figured for the cost of using a certified public accountant I would get the money back in either actual deductions I may have missed, or someone to yell at if/when the IRS called to question those deductions (luckily it has been the former and not the latter).
I try to have all the boring money stuff streamlined as possible since my CPA loves to just bullshit away, so I create this post every year to give myself a reminder what to bring.
What do I need to Bring to my Income Tax Account with my Accountant?
Obviously this post is geared towards me, but it may remind you of something that you may need.
Income
Earned Income
- My W2
- The Wife’s 1099
- Law Offices of Me Income Information
- Online World Income (all payments are done via paypal so this is actually pretty easy)
- Investment Club – This is really a secondary business filing, but I handle the contact with the CPA so I do this all together.
Investment Income
- Bank 1099s – it is amazing how much this has calmed down from the bank bonus days, so really just my ING/CapitalOne360 Account
- 1099 Escrow Income
- Perpetual Income Portfolio – My 1099-Div and Capital Gains/Losses 1099 isn’t available yet! So I had to print out a ton of information. I hope this will work for my CPA.
- All of my family’s investment information – I have discussed the topic in the past, but I keep all monetary gifts to my nieces and nephews (as well as my children) in my own name. I then invest it for them…do I pay taxes on it? Of course, but the few dollars I pay is well worth the control I have over it.
- Joint Account I have with my Brother – I don’t talk about this often but maybe I will this year
- Wife’s investment portfolio form her parent’s and grandparent’s gifts accumulated over the better part of her life
Deductions
- Mortgage Interest / Property Tax Paid – Same 1098 Form
- Student Loan Interest Deduction
- Home Office Deductions – I provide my CPA with pure numbers and then he figures out the percentage I can deduct
- Cable, Internet and Phone
- Cell Phones
- Electricity
- Gas
- IRA and Roth IRA Contribution information
We’ve typically just done our taxes through TurboTax although we might swap to using an accountant in the future if my wife’s side hustle grows into something considerable. I much preferred doing my taxes when I was a single guy with no house. It took me about 15 minutes to do my taxes each year. Not so much anymore. Though since we’re using TurboTax this year I can start and stop entering our information as the forms come in which will be much better than previous years where we waited until really late to file.
I’m also pretty annoyed our brokerage forms aren’t available for download yet. It’s freaking February and all of that information is already in their system. Why is it taking so long? I could do like you and just download all of our statements but I want to use the form that they’re reporting to the IRS so I can make sure that everything’s right when I put it in/import it and just do it once instead of going based of the statements and having to double check against the 1099’s.