Long Plagerized Post - Taxes
Tax Tips & Tools on the Web
By Kassandra Bentley, President, CyberInvest.com (http://www.cyberinvest.com)
The IRS may become kinder and gentler in the new millennium, but April 15
is still the deadline, you might as well start preparing for the
inevitable, and there's no better helper than the Internet. Here are eleven
websites that can help take some of the pain out of the process.
1. From now until the April 15 The Motley Fool (http://www.fool.com) will
run a series of
articles on today's most relevant tax issues. The first article is on "The
New Roth IRA." Viewer mail will be answered at the end of each article.
(You can post your questions on the Fool's message boards.) There's also a
Tax Q&A and Tax FAQs (for newbies, FAQ stands for frequently asked
questions) that cover everything from broker commissions to worthless
stocks. Where to find all this? Click The Fool's School, then select Talk
to the Tax Man from the scrolling menu under Other Features.
2. Ernst & Young offers free tax help in its Personal Financial Counseling
section
(http://www.ey.com/pfc). There's a summary of the 1997 Tax Relief Act and
in their Timely
Tips section, such pertinent offerings as "10 Big Investment Mistakes",
"Year-end Tax Tips," "How to Avoid 25 Common Errors," "50 of the Most
Easily Overlooked Deductions," and "10 Smart Tax Planning Tips." They also
provide free links to most states' tax sites.
3. MoneyClub (http://www.moneyclub.com) has an outstanding list of
tax-related links. Among them, links to a Taxpayers Help and Education
section for all 50 states, which gives you the mailing address for your
forms, telephone numbers for live assistance, and even Braille tax materials.
4. Smart Money's Tax Guide (http://www.smartmoney.com/ac/tax/) is, in
their words, "a plain English primer on the many confusing parts of the tax
code that are actually relevant to you." Some of the topics covered in this
guide: "Untangling Capital Gains," Year-End Tax Planning," "Tax Ideas for
the Self-Employed," "The Kiddie Tax," The Marriage Penalty," "The Nanny
Tax," and "Writing Off Home Office and Investment Expenses."
5. H&R Block (http://www.hrblock.com/tax) offers free tax tips for
specific groups including the military, single parents, senior citizens,
employers, farmers, students, and U.S. residents with family outside the U.S.
6. Nest Egg Interactive (http://nestegg.iddis.com) has a number of
articles on taxes written by Robert Tie, CFP. One of the best is entitled
"Income Tax Exemptions Getting Them Right." Tip: At the Nest Egg home
page, click Reference Center, then Taxes.
7. Deloitte & Touche (http://www.dtonline.com) brings you the latest tax
news from
Washington and a special report on the 1997 Taxpayer Relief Act called
"Promises Kept: The
1997 Tax Act." Well-organized links take you quickly to the most relevant
sections of the
report, such as Help for Families, Capital Gains Planning Tips, Small
Business Tax Cuts, and International Provisions. And, for $6.95 you can
get D&T's 90-page tax guide that provides tips for cutting your 1997 taxes,
reducing your 1998 tax bill, and tells you what to look for in 1999.
8. Tax Logic Corporation (http://www.taxlogic.com) has excellent, free
FAQs aimed at tax
filings for individuals, the self-employed, partnerships, corporations, and
gifts, trust & estates. For a fee, they'll file your return electronically
(a fee schedule is onsite), and clients may ask questions and get a reply
by e-mail. Non-clients pay $15 a question.
9. Quicken.com's tax page (http://www.quicken.com/taxes) offers tips,
tools, articles and links, and their best-selling tax software, TurboTax,
which debuts as an online feature in early February.
10. Many sites offer links for downloading tax forms, but why not get them
directly from the horse's, uh, mouth. The IRS site
(http://www.irs.ustreas.gov) offers every known tax form, plus links to
state tax forms. For the best results, you'll need either the Adobe
Acrobat reader (which you can download on the spot) or a PostScript
printer. You can learn more about these formats at the IRS site.
Got this in email from Cybervest - thoughtI would share the links for those who could use.
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