The Return of Tax Returns Filing

How many of you notice that I always seem to “disappear” from my blog during the first three months of the year?  It was no different this year, if you’d noticed.  I had a valid reason of course… My three kids have birthdays in the first quarter of the year and I would be busy planning their birthday parties and what-have-yous.   This year was slightly low-key but still I was kept busy till my neck!  Plus there was the Lunar New Year celebration too and this year, I also had some time devoted to my Izumio business.  More on that later… 🙂

But now that we are fast approaching April, I can relax a little because I don’t need to bake birthday cakes all the time!  I can bake breads and experiment with some new exciting recipes… However, a cloud looms above and I have started to think about the impending filing of tax returns! Aaarrrrghh!

How do you do your tax returns each year? Do you start hunting for receipts and documents when the time comes? Or do you have everything organised and ready? Do you do it yourself or do you hire someone to do it? Or do you (shudder!!!) not do it at all?!!

Me? I am tasked with doing both my tax returns as well as hubby’s. I used to keep receipts and documents in an old shoe box, but now I use neat poly envelopes like these:

To make the envelope look more uniformed, I have a folder inside which holds documents for that particular year.  Of course, I use my labelmaker and label them accordingly for each year.

I included an envelope for book receipts, and other relevant receipts so I can easily refer to them when filing taxes.  Throughout the year, I would put related documents into the relevant folder or envelope; and now that it’s tax time I simply take out the envelope with the corresponding label for that year.

I then sort through the documents like book receipts, sports equipment purchase, insurance premiums and the like and start to account for them.

I have a very simple spreadsheet that calculates income and tax payable.Once I have the amounts corrected and justified, I will proceed to enter the figures and data via e-filing.

I am the officially appointed home accountant so I manage tax returns for my husband and I. Yes, even though I am only equipped with SPM principles of accounts standard. Hahaha.

Have you started on your tax returns yet? Is it your most dreaded time of the year? Do you still submit hard copy or do you do e-filing?

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Quick Reminder on SUBMISSION DEADLINES

• April 30 2015: if you’re submitting tax returns as an individual (not running a business) – Borang BE
• June 30 2015: if you’re submitting tax returns and running a business – Borang B

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