Synopses & Reviews
"The best of these books for tax novices."
—Worth magazine
Can a fantastic tax-prep guide actually make doing your taxes fun? Probably not, but you'll have a lot more fun doing your taxes with the help of Taxes 2008 For Dummies than you would without it.
This uncommonly friendly tax guide weaves you through the tax-filing maze, walking you line by line through the most common forms for fast, easy filing. Fully updated for 2008, including details on Alternative Minimum Tax relief, enhanced child tax benefits, and deductibility of mortgage insurance premiums, this indispensable handbook also a new list of wise end-of-year moneysaving tax moves. You’ll discover how to:
- Organize your records and keep them organized
- Choose your filing status
- Save time and money filing your taxes
- Itemize your deductions with Schedule A
- Take full advantage of Schedule C deductions
- Determine your capital gains and losses
- Negotiate with the IRS
- Use tax credits to reduce what you owe
- Make tax-wise personal finance decisions
- Maximize your tax software and e-filing options
- Audit-proof your tax return
- Make sure you don't pay for IRS mistakes
Complete with four Top Ten tip lists covering audit avoidance, finding overlooked tax-reduction opportunities, interview questions for tax advisers, and special tax issues for military families, Taxes 2008 For Dummies may not make you laugh while your filling out your tax forms, but you'll smile when your done.
Synopsis
Praise for Taxes For Dummies"The best of these books for tax novices."
—Worth magazine
"The most accessible and creative. It's also the best organized."
—USA Today
"Will make tax preparation less traumatic."
—The Wall Street Journal
"Sound financial advice you can use throughout the year."
—The Seattle Times
Covers critical tax code changes
File properly, save time and money and minimize errors
This friendly book guides you through the tax-filing maze, walking you line-by-line through the most common forms. Fully updated for 2008, including details on Alternative Minimum Tax relief, enhanced child tax benefits, and deductibility of mortgage insurance premiums, this indispensable guide also offers a new list of wise end-of-year money-saving tax moves.
Discover how to:
- Itemize your deductions
- Negotiate with the IRS
- Take advantage of tax credits to reduce what you owe
- Make tax-wise personal finance decisions
- Maximize your tax software and e-filing options
- Audit-proof your tax return
Synopsis
Taxes 2009 For Dummiesupdates changes in the tax laws for tax year 2008. Taxes 2009 For Dummiescontinues to use its popular hands-on, line-by-line approach that walks taxpayers through each line of the 1040 and its major schedules, explaining how to find needed information, providing handy math tips for puzzling calculations, and ensuring that no line is neglected or misread.
About the Author
Eric Tyson, MBA, is a bestselling author, syndicated columnist, and lecturer. He works with and teaches people from myriad income levels and backgrounds, so he knows the financial and tax questions and concerns of real folks.
After toiling away for too many years as a management consultant to behemoth financialservice firms, Eric decided to take his knowledge of the industry and commit himself to making personal financial management accessible to all of us. Despite being handicapped by a joint B.S. in Economics and Biology from Yale and an MBA from Stanford, Eric remains a master at “keeping it simple.”
An accomplished freelance personal-finance writer, Eric is the author of other For Dummies national bestsellers on Personal Finance, Investing, Real Estate Investing, and Home Buying. His work has been critically acclaimed in hundreds of publications and programs including Newsweek, The Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Kiplinger’s Personal Finance Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, and NBC’s Today Show, ABC, CNBC, PBS’s Nightly Business Report, CNN, FOX-TV, CBS national radio, Bloomberg Business Radio, and Business Radio Network.
Margaret Atkins Munro, EA, (who answers to Peggy) is a tax advisor, writer, and lecturer with more than 30 years’ experience in various areas of taxation and finance with a mission in life to make taxes understandable to anyone willing to learn. Her practice is concentrated in the areas of family tax, small business, trusts, estates, and charitable foundations.
She is a graduate of The Johns Hopkins University and has also attended University College Cork (Ireland) and the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies in Toronto, and she feels that her ability to decipher the language in the Internal Revenue Code derives completely from her familiarity with a variety of obscure medieval languages.
Peggy is the author of 529 & Other College Savings Plans For Dummies. She lectures for the IRS annually for its volunteer tax preparer programs and speaks on a variety of tax-related topics.
David J. Silverman, EA, has served on the Advisory Group to the Commissioner of Internal Revenue. David has a Certificate in Taxation from New York University and has been in private practice in Manhattan for more than 25 years.
He regularly testifies on tax issues before both the Senate Finance Committee and the House of Representatives Committee on Ways and Means. As the result of his suggestions regarding penalty reform that he made while testifying before these committees, legislation was enacted that reduced the amount of penalties that may be assessed in a number of key areas.
David is the author of Battling the IRS, which has received critical acclaim in The New York Times, Money, The Wall Street Journal, and numerous other publications. David has been a contributing editor and wrote a monthly column for Smart Money magazine and is frequently interviewed on national TV and radio as an expert on tax issues.
Table of Contents
Introduction.Part I: Getting Ready to File.
Chapter 1: Understanding the U.S. Tax System.
Chapter 2: Tax Return Preparation Options and Tools.
Chapter 3: Getting and Staying Organized.
Chapter 4: No Form Fits All (Or, What Kind of Taxpayer Are You?).
Part II: Tackling the Various Forms.
Chapter 5: Easy Filing: 1040EZ and 1040A.
Chapter 6: Form 1040: Income Stuff.
Chapter 7: Form 1040, Part II: Adjustments to Income Stuff.
Chapter 8: The Rest of the 1040.
Part III: Filling Out Schedules and Other Forms.
Chapter 9: Itemized Deductions: Schedule A.
Chapter 10: Interest and Dividend Income: Schedule B (1040), Schedule 1 (1040A).
Chapter 11: Business Tax Schedules: C, C-EZ, and F.
Chapter 12: Capital Gains and Losses: Schedule D.
Chapter 13: Supplemental Income and Loss: Schedule E.
Chapter 14: Giving Credits Where Credits Are Due.
Chapter 15: Other Schedules and Forms to File.
Part IV: Audits and Errors: Dealing with the IRS.
Chapter 16: Dreaded Envelopes: IRS Notices, Assessments, and Audits.
Chapter 17: Fixing Mistakes the IRS Makes.
Chapter 18: Fixing Your Own Mistakes.
Part V: Year-Round Tax Planning.
Chapter 19: Tax-Wise Personal Finance Decisions.
Chapter 20: Reducing Taxes with Retirement Accounts.
Chapter 21: Small-Business Tax Planning.
Chapter 22: Your Investments and Taxes.
Chapter 23: Real Estate and Taxes.
Chapter 24: Children and Taxes.
Chapter 25: Estate Planning.
Part VI: The Part of Tens.
Chapter 26: Ten Tips for Reducing Your Chances of Being Audited.
Chapter 27: Ten (or So) Often-Overlooked Tax-Reduction Opportunities.
Chapter 28: Ten Tax Tips for Military Families.
Chapter 29: Ten Interview Questions for Tax Advisors.
Glossary.
Index.