How Do I File My Taxes?

How Do I File my Taxes?

Filing your taxes can seem intimidating, but once you get all of the paperwork together, the process is actually pretty straightforward. In order to file your taxes, you will need a W-2 from whichever businesses you have worked for over the past year, as well as receipts for any donations that you make to charity, and any gains that you have accrued through capital gains or dividends on stocks. 

Once you have gathered all of the paperwork, you will just need to choose a path based on your “filing status” (choosing your status should be straightforward, as there are just a couple of categories that you can choose from). Then, you just need to choose a way to complete the actual paperwork, based on your status. For every single status, there are paper copies of the forms that you file, but you can also use services like TurboTax that can help you do it.

During the filing process, you must decide whether or not you want to have standardized or itemized deductions. The main difference between the two options is that standardized deductions are the same amount for every single taxpayer, while itemized deductions are determined on a taxpayer by taxpayer basis. Itemized deductions are great if you had a year with a lot of atypical charges, like surprise medical expenses or charity donations that you can get a refund from.

If you have to make tax payments, you just have to make a direct payment through your bank account, or you could send it a check.