Tax Season Planning with Ed Slott

Tax season is open, which means there’s another opportunity to: (a) vent about how much you hate this time of year, (b) complain about the complexity of the U.S. code, and (c) whine about your refund being lower than previous years, even though you know that a refund is just the return of the extra money that you paid Uncle Sam, on which he paid zero interest.

The Internal Revenue Service is hoping that this year’s filing season will be less fraught than last year’s, because the government has remained open (remember the 35-day shutdown of 2018-2019?) and it will be the second time that the American taxpayers will be filing under the new rules that emerged from the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA).

The deadline to file 2019 tax returns and pay any tax owed is Wednesday, April 15, 2020 and the IRS expects that more than 150 million individual tax returns will be filed.

Back with us for his annual tax season appearance is Ed Slott, the ultimate tax guru and founder of IRA Help.

The best way to prepare for this season is to grab last year’s return as a guide to what’s missing and then to start organizing your documents (W-2s, 1099s, as well as bank, investment, mutual fund and mortgage company documents) in a simple file. While most of tax year 2019 will look like 2018, there are inflation adjustments to the standard deduction, tax bracket ranges and many tax credits. 

There are also a few notable changes which we’ll discuss with Ed.

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"Jill on Money" theme music is by Joel Goodman, www.joelgoodman.com.