What do you need from me to do my taxes?
We get this question often, so we’re giving an overview of the common forms and information we need from clients to help them prepare their taxes.
If you’re just looking for how to find the email to upload your documents, click here
For clients that worked with us on fall planning:
Your 2023 fall planning document has a page titled “what docs we’ll need for 2023 taxes” that covers EXACTLY what we’ll need from you! Don’t have your tax plan handy? Here’s a quick video on how to find it:
For clients that did not work with us on fall planning:
You’ll need to track down the usual documents that we ask for every year. Once you send those in, we’ll follow up with a list of anything we’re still missing, but we do ask that you try to be as complete as possible in your first round of sending information to us!
Individuals:
Wages - If you worked at a job this year that withheld taxes from your pay, then they should be issuing you a form W-2 by the end of January showing the total you made, along with all the taxes that were withheld from your checks. This also applies to part time and “freelance” jobs where they took taxes out. If they took taxes, there should be a W-2.
Investment Income - If you have interest bearing bank accounts, stocks that issue dividends or an investment account other than an IRA/401K, you should receive some forms 1099-INT, 1099-DIV or a consolidated 1099 reporting that activity. Those forms are typically generated by 2/15, so you may not have received them yet.
Stock sales - If you sold stocks this year, you should also be receiving a form 1099-B to report the sale. These are often included in the consolidated 1099 if you held those stocks in a brokerage account, but if you’re in an employee stock plan, or hold stocks outside of a brokerage, the forms may come separately.
Unemployment Income - If you collected unemployment income this year, you should receive a form 1099-G from the state. You can log into your UI account and download this form.
Retirement withdrawals - If you withdrew funds from a retirement account this year, or rolled one over to an IRA, they will generate a form 1099-R to report that to you.
HSA Contributions/withdrawals - If you put $ into an HSA for this year, there should be a form 5498 to report the contributions, and a 1099-SA to report the distributions.
Student Loan interest - If you paid student loans this year, there will be a form 1098-E to report the interest you paid.
Mortgage interest - If you pay a mortgage for your residence or a rental property, the bank will provide you with a form 1098-INT reflecting the interest paid during the year. This form can also report the real estate taxes paid if you pay them via escrow, but if not, we’ll need that info separately.
Health insurance - If you had health insurance coverage through a marketplace plan at any point during the year, you will receive a form 1095-A to report that coverage. Failure to properly report this form can result in some big notices later in the year, so make sure you get it.
Dependents - If you added any new dependents this year (COVID baby boom anyone?) we’ll need the new little credit’s date of birth, legal name and SSN for them to get that sweet child tax credit. Sorry, fur babies don’t count.
IRA/retirement contributions - If you made contributions to your traditional or roth IRA, we’ll need to know the amount. You have until the due date of the returns (4/15) if you haven’t contributed yet, there’s still time.
Estimated tax payments made - If you paid your estimates for this year, please let us know the dates and amounts of all of those payments so we can give you proper credit for them.
Freelancers and businesses with no employees:
Freelance/business Income - If you worked as a freelancer this year you should be receiving a form 1099-NEC for any jobs you were paid more than $600 for services. Your freelance income is reportable whether you get the form or not, so if some 1099’s don’t show up, just include it in your income totals (more on that below) and let us know no form was received. No need to hold things up unless you think there might be a discrepancy between what you’re reporting and the form.
Freelance/business expenses - If you’ve been listening all year, you have your expenses nice neat and organized and are ready to send them over, but just on the off chance you had a rough year and aren’t quite there yet, we set up a template you can use to organize that info!
Businesses with employees (including S-corporations)
2023 Financial statements - If we don’t do your bookkeeping, please provide us with either access to your accounting software, or a copy of your complete and final 2023 financial statements. If you need your bookkeeping completed, let us know and we can help you out. If you want to organize it yourself and are looking for a template to follow, feel free to use ours.
Forms W-2/W-3 - If you had employees (including S-corp owners) we’ll need your forms W-2 and W-3 for all employees to agree them to your financials. If you have already shared us as a user on your payroll platform, no action needed, we can grab these ourselves.
Updated addresses for all owners - Lots of people moved this year, so we’d like to make sure we have the most up to date information for their K-1’s
What else? We tried to cover the biggest areas, but if there’s something you think we should know that isn’t covered above or you didn’t get a form for, just tell us about it and we’ll help figure out what documentation we need to prepare things correctly!
We’re looking forward to another exciting and fun-filled tax season with you!
Ben & Team