Knowing which documents you need to do your taxes and having them at your fingertips makes doing your taxes much easier. You will be able to do your taxes all in one shot instead of stopping for hours or days to get back to them. And, if you have an accountant do the taxes, the accountant won’t be delayed by having to call you for additional documents. Documents you need for include:

• W-2 Forms, 1099-Misc and other forms that show wages, salaries and tips

• 1099-INT and 1099-OID forms for interest income

• Form 1099-DIV for dividend income

• Form 1099-B for capital gains and other documents for sales of land, stock, etc.

• Form 1099-S for sale of real estate

• From 1099-G for state tax refunds

• Alimony paid or received

• Unemployment compensation received

• Forms 1099-R and SSA-1099 for retirement income

• Any income and expenses from businesses, rentals, farm, partnerships, trusts and S-Corporations

• Any tax-deductible miles that you traveled for business

• Information for the child tax credit, child care provider address and ID number, the amounts you paid for the child and dependent care credit

• Earned income tax credit

• Adoption expenses

• Foreign taxes you may have paid

• Information for the first time home buyer tax credit

• Any expenses that you may deduct including medical expenses, medical insurance premiums, prescription drug expenses, other medical expenses and miles traveled for medical reasons

• Home mortgage interest for first and second homes, real estate taxes you paid, state taxes you paid for the previous year, personal property taxes you paid, any cash you gave to charity, expenses for volunteer work, theft and loss expenses and other deductions

You will also need estimated tax payments and whether you applied last year’s overpayment to this year’s taxes. Additional information you may need includes last year’s tax return, the family’s social security numbers and years of birth, college expenses and the last year’s adjusted gross income. If you plan on filing electronically, you’ll also need the routing number account number for the bank account where you want your refund deposited.

If documents are to be sent from a client to an accountant, be sure to forward them via a secure method or hand-deliver the documents.

Documents to Shred After Checklist is Completed

Once you have completed the tax preparation checklist 2018, you can use the same tax return checklist for clients or yourself to purge old tax records. If you keep a copy of a tax preparation checklist PDF attached to each file, you’ll be able to check off all the documents that require shredding. These documents may include:

• Anything with a social security number on it.

• Anything with an address, phone number or other personal or business contact information on it, including address labels on magazines.

• Any client or employee information that is no longer needed, even if it has just an address on it.

• Any documents pertaining to tax returns or financial affairs, whether they belong to you, a client or an employee.

While an accountant may be required to keep a client’s records for a certain number of years, you are free to purge the files after that time has expired. However, you should always contact the client prior to discarding his or her records. If the client does not want the records or you cannot contact the client, place the files in a lock box from Carolina Shred. The locked boxes will keep old files with sensitive information safe from prying eyes until our truck is scheduled to pick them up and shred them.

Contact Carolina Shred

Contact Carolina Shred after you gather all documents you want to shred based on the small business tax preparation checklist. Keep the documents under lock and key if you don’t have a locked shredding box, otherwise place them in the locked boxes to wait for our shredding truck to come to your business or home.