It’s the most wonderful time of the year! Tax season! Who doesn’t love spending time pulling together all the documents and information necessary to file taxes?

I’m obviously being facetious, although if you are organized, this task may not seem so daunting. Something that helped me last year was to create a master list of what financial tax documents I should be receiving. I’m not sure why it took me so long to do this but it helped me a lot for this year!

As tax documents like my banking 1099s came in, I would record the source on my master list. I have some documents that I have to retrieve electronically since I am paperless with some of my financial institutions. This is where I was getting tripped up in the past – remembering who they all were, what the website and password were, figuring out where on the website the tax documents were located. So I added all that information onto my master list and password protected the document itself.

The checklist made my document gathering so much easier, and helped me track down the forms that some institutions don’t usually provide until the middle of February. Now I can make my appointment with my tax professional!