Wouldn’t it be nice not to have piles of paper in heaps, in files, covering your desk, on your kitchen table? Weren’t we promised paperless offices years ago. Except for some very determined and organized people, few have been able to accomplish this.

Banks, credit card companies, online storage companies all encourage us to save trees, take advantage of the technology available, opt for ebills and actually establish paperless offices.

It is important to make a commitment to a paperless office. Then systematically one needs to opt for ebills. Some online paying systems make this very easy and painless. Once you’ve switched to ebills, it also helps to sign on for alerts by email. This can be customized so that you’re alerted as soon as your ebill is available, 5 or 9 days (say) before the due date or if the bill has not been paid online by the due date; and of course all of the above, if you choose. There is then the task of creating electronic folders on your computer for all your payees. The ebills can then go into the respective folders, all organized for the taxman. Many businesses that provide ebills have not yet furnished a means by which individuals can mark their ebills as paid. Ebills may be available in PDF form but anything you might want to add to it cannot then be saved unless you have the appropriate Adobe software yourself. You can usually take a snapshot of whatever you have filled in and paste it and save it in Word.

It would be wonderful to eliminate all tax forms: income, business, employer…….all! But we’re not there yet. Fortunately it’s coming. Even the IRS promises to have everything in electronic form soon.

Once we’ve made the commitment to ourselves to do this it will need a concerted effort to make sure paper is not generated for anything. All invoices would have to be sent via email. If you have a business, eventually you would need to roll out an online service where clients can have accounts and be able to deal with payments etc. online. There might be stray bills that still come via snail mail. But they would be so few and far between, it would become very easy to immediately file away in the appropriately custom label file in those very stylish file drawers that are now available.

Do you shudder when tax-time comes? Do shoeboxes of bills and receipts confront you in April? Organize yourself for tax-time all year round.

Mom and Dad at Taxtime

All is not lost. There’s still time to get ready for April 2009 without getting flustered. You can do one better for 2009 records. At the very beginning of the year grab a file folder, duly label it Tax year 2009. In you pop those DMV bills that let you claim license fees on your 1040. If you have medical bills, prescription, flex or HSA claims, pop them in or better yet, have a separate sub-folder for them. An accordion file, subcategorized with appropriate labels, is another device for all your tax papers.

If you have a home office and who doesn’t these days, have a separate file for your mortgage bills. If you claim your home office on your personal income tax it’s a sound idea to have your mortgage bills readily available. Have you made charitable contributions? Those receipts should also be safely tucked away to claim your deductions. For small business home offices you might have other claims. Do you claim a percentage of your utility bills, landscaping and gardening and other such expenses? All this paperwork should also be ready at hand.

When February rolls around, the bank will send you your mortgage annual statements. 1099s will arrive daily in the mail. All your annual stock statements will be arriving. Immediately stock them away in your 1040 file. As soon as they are all there, you can easily start on your income tax return.

Once those returns are done, you can begin to relax. Maybe for once you can actually enjoy those April showers and flowers and Spring! There’s one more chore, however. If there are credit card statements and other expenses that you couldn’t take any deductions for, if you don’t need them for anything else, do shred and discard them. Returns from previous years and back-up paperwork for them can be archived and put away so they don’t clutter up your new filing system. If you follow these simple tips, when tax-time rolls around again, you will be less stressed. With no disorganization and chaos to deal with, come tax-time you will save time and tax-time will become less taxing!

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