Organize and file your taxes with your smartphone / These helpful apps make filing your taxes a little less painful, from start to finish.

Sara Mitroff for CNET writes: Few of us like to do our taxes. Entering numbers over and over, lengthy questionnaires and looming fearing of a large tax payment all make the yearly process feel tedious and exhausting.

Luckily, in recent years our smartphones have become great tools to manage your taxes from start to finish. With an army of apps, you can take the sting out of preparing and filing your 1040s, get your refund in no time and move on with your year.

Find out what you owe or if you're getting a refund

Before you even sit down to do your taxes, you can get a general idea of what you'll owe or get back in a refund. TaxCaster by TurboTax, available for iOS, Android and on the Web, gives you an snapshot of your tax situation and all you need is your W-2 and other income documents.

Just enter a bit of information about your filing status, dependents and income, then enter any tax breaks and deductions and TaxCaster will show you if you owe Uncle Sam or if he owes you and how much. You can use the tool even if you don't have the exact numbers from last year, but the more precise your information, the more precise the snapshot will be.

Corral and back up receipts

Hoarding receipts and invoices to itemized your deductions? Keep everything organized and safe by scanning those slips of paper now so when you sit down to do your taxes, you're not hunting around for that one receipt. But before you run out to buy a scanner, head to the app store.

Evernote's new Scannable app (iOS only) quickly scans your physical invoices, receipts and any other important slips of paper so you can have a digital copy. Scans are crisp and clear, even in less-than-ideal lighting and you can back them up to Evernote, where you can tag and organize them. You can also share them via message, email and iCloud.

If you have an Android phone, try Scanbot, which can scan any document and automatically save it to your cloud storage account, such as Dropbox, Google Drive, Box or Amazon Cloud Drive. You can edit your scans before you save them, tweaking the lighting and orientation.

Lastly, if you think you'll itemize your taxes next year, get into the habit of scanning necessary receipts as soon as you get them, so that they're ready for you next tax season. SNIP, the article continues @ CNET, click here to continue reading....