Your Financial Action Plan: 12 Simple Steps to Achieve Money Success
Unfortunately, when it comes to taxes, that “D’oh!” can cost dough. Sometimes an error means paying more in taxes. Other times it delays refunds. To help make sure your return is perfect, here are 16 common tax-filing errors that you can avoid.
- Mis-figuring the child tax credit. The good intentions of lawmakers have turned into a tax-filing nightmare for more than a million taxpayers.
- Making math errors. Every year, the most common mistake on tax returns is bad math. Mistakes in arithmetic or in transferring figures from one schedule to another will get you an immediate correction notice.
- Not including Social Security numbers. Since the IRS stopped putting taxpayer Social Security numbers on tax package labels in response to privacy concerns, many taxpayers forget to write in their identification numbers.
- Not signing and dating your return. For legal purposes, the IRS will not process a return if it does not have a signature.
- Not using the preprinted label and envelope from the tax package.
- Forgetting about interest and dividends.
- Forgetting to claim charitable donations.
- Not including all your forms. Do not forget to attach your W-2 form, so the IRS can confirm the wage amount you report on your return.
- Not properly tracking your investment basis.
- Using the EZ form when a longer form could cut your taxes.
- Making the check out incorrectly—or forgetting to sign it! If you owe money and choose to pay by check, make it payable to the United States Treasury, not the IRS. This change safeguards your check a bit more.
- Forgetting to group your deductions such as: medical costs, miscellaneous expenses…
- Not taking all the credits you’re eligible for. Do not pass up any opportunities for getting a tax credit—it could mean money in your pocket!
- Using the wrong tax table.
- Missing the deadline to request an extension.
- Not putting the proper postage on your return package.