Organizing Tax Papers

Can you believe it’s already April? And for Americans, this is the month of the dreaded income tax return. Each year when I make our calendar, I add a skull-and-crossbones to April 15. My dad always got a kick out of this.


Calendar graphic purchased from The Vintage Workshop; text added by me.

Many years ago, the HP Activity Center offered free checklists, file and envelope labels for you to organize your taxes. I downloaded the materials and used them to help us with our own tax papers. Now they don’t offer the labels, but you can make them yourself with plain or pretty labels. HP does still offer a tax preparation checklist.



These are our tax working files. When tax preparation time rolls around, like now, I pull the papers I’ve filed. The file folders are used again for the next year’s information.



When the taxes are done, I place a copy of the forms we’ve mailed in white catalog-sized envelopes and place that year’s label on the envelope. I mailed our state and federal filings off last week.



The envelopes are then filed in chronological order in our tax file drawer. Should there be an audit or some reason to return to a particular year’s tax filling, I have everything in the envelope (including all substantiating documents).