Doing Your Taxes: 5 Apps to Dig Out and Track Tax Deductions

William Peacock, Esq. for Findlaw writes: I won't wait till April. I won't wait till April.

I won't wait till April.  Now that we have that out of the way, how can you harness the power of modern technology and smartphone apps to make this year's tax deadline suck ever-so-slightly less? For us disorganized procrastinators, we're going to have to dig though student loan bills, online purchases, charitable contributions, and other potential deductions that we failed to track throughout the past year. Plus, maybe, just maybe, we should change things up and start tracking those deductions as we go along.

 

Maybe.

 

It's time folks. Don't wait until April to do the digging. Your CPA, if you use one, will hate you.

 

Digging Up Deductions

Slice and Dice (Free)

Slice goes through your email inbox to track down every purchase you've ever made online. This is great for either skimming your list for deductable items. Plus, the "Slice and Dice" tab breaks your purchases into categories, such as travel, automotive, etc. A particularly useful feature, that has nothing to do with taxes, is the tracking of delivery dates.

 

Mint (Free)

Mint is the personal finance app. Ten million users. Rave reviews from pretty much everyone. It organizes your finances by connecting to your bank accounts. It even has a tax deduction tagging feature that we're itching to try out.

 

Make Next Year Better

Expensify (Free for Individuals)

Their motto is "expense reports that don't suck."What they lack in clever marketing, they make up for in utility.

 

Expensify stalks your credit card and bank accounts to pull out deductable purchases. You can also track deductable mileage with the mobile app and scan in receipts (which are automatically turned into expenses).

 

Evernote (Free or Premium)

If you're overloaded on dedicated apps, the uber-popular note-taking app Evernote is another great way to track deductions. Create a dedicated notebook for taxes and then save pictures of receipts, notes of online transactions, student loan payments, and anything else that'll help you squeeze change out of Uncle Sam's pockets. It's a less auto-magic solution than the alternatives, but if handing out your banking information to a handful of companies makes you nervous, this is a little more secure.

 

What's a Deduction?

Ask a CPA

If, like the rest of America, the tax code makes you want to beat yourself in the face repeatedly with a heavy object, Ask a CPA allows you to play Q&A with actual CPAs for free. You can read others' questions or submit your own.

 

Stop Procrastinating

Now that you have the tools, get to it! April may be four months away, but why wait? After all, digging through your inbox for deductions, even with Slice, is going to take awhile.