Most people are employees and their employer withholds taxes every paycheck to pay the Federal and State governments. At the end of the year you file your taxes and receive your tax refund. Happy, happy- joy, joy! You are one of the lucky ones. However, things don’t quite work out this way if you are self-employed and required to file a Schedule C. If you were one of the unlucky people that owed this year you may need to consider paying estimated taxes. Filing estimated taxes is simply a method for you to pay your taxes throughout the year on income that is not subject to withholding. That includes not only income from self-employment, but interest and dividends, prizes or awards, alimony, rent, and gains from sales of assets. Taxpayers who expect to owe $1,000 or more after subtracting tax withholding and credits may have to pay estimated taxes. In addition, taxpayers who expect withholding and credits to be less than the smaller of (a) 90 percent of their 2011 tax return or (b) 100 percent of the tax on their 2010 return may need to pay estimated taxes. Federal estimated payments are generally due on April 15, June 15, Sept. 15 and Jan. 15. State estimated payments generally fall on the same dates as well. If you pay State estimated payments and you are itemizing, you should make your Jan. 15th payment by Dec. 31st so you can claim all 4 payments on your current year’s tax return. If you wait until Jan. to make the payment you can only claim 3 of your 4 payments on your current years itemized deductions. The 4th payment will have to be claimed on your following year’s tax return. Paying estimated taxes can be considered a drag but they will save you tax dollars in the future. If you don’t pay your share of taxes on time or not at all you could end up owing the IRS an underpayment penalty in addition to the taxes that you owe. The penalty will be based on the how much and how long you have owed the tax to the IRS. Keep your estimated taxes paid on time to save yourself money in the long run!

No matter what you could want when it comes to doing your taxes, the IRS has probably got a publication out there to explain it. Coupling your publication with TaxSlayer.com tax software makes doing your taxes online a piece of cake. Here are a few of the most popular IRS publications. 1. Publication 17: Your Federal Income Tax. This is the overall guide to help individuals with their online tax preparation. 2. Publication 3: Armed Forces’ Tax Guide. This one is tax filing for the military broken down in bite-sized pieces. 3. Publication 334: Tax Guide for Small Business. Get rid of those Schedule C nightmares by understanding taxable income and legitimate deductions. 4. Publication 463: Travel, Entertainment, Gift and Car Expenses. Do you need answers for deductible employee expenses? You can find the answers to them here! 5. Publication 502: Medical and Dental Expenses. Don’t know if it’s a qualified expense? Check out this one. 6. Publication 503: Child and Dependent Care Expenses. Is soccer day camp deductible? In some cases it is. You can find other bits of useful information here as well. 7. Publication 504: Divorced or Separated Individuals. Legal fees paid for tax advice in connection with a divorce and legal fees to get alimony may be deductible. Read this publication to find out other potential tax savings. 8. Publication 521: Moving Expenses. Know what counts as a qualified moving expense. You may be pleasantly surprised. 9. Publication 525: Taxable and Nontaxable Income. Is your Social Security, Inheritance or Disability Income taxable? This is a great resource to find out if it is or isn’t! 10. If you don’t want to use the publications you should try out TaxSlayer.com’s ‘Bobby Videos’. ‘Bobby’ is a virtual tax guide and is one of the unique help features available to you as you do your tax return. ‘Bobby’ can explain common tax questions in layman terms. In addition, you can always refer to our help wizards or help center for more information. Whatever kind of taxes you need to do online, you may actually be able to find an entire publication about it. If not, there is certainly a chapter somewhere to help you do your taxes online. This list includes only a few of the many publications found within our software.

Kids are afraid of the monster under the bed; adults are afraid of IRS audits. Although the IRS is going to do a certain number of them a year, and there is no fool-proof way to guarantee you will never be a target, there are some simple ways to be careful during tax preparation and make yourself a little less interesting to them. 1. Check your numbers. Nothing is quite as enticing to the Internal Revenue Service as shoddy math and round numbers. If they think you may not actually know what goes on your tax return, it will be very tempting for them to come and take a look. And the IRS is not required to resist temptation. 2. Inconsistent reporting. If the numbers you are reporting on your tax return don’t match what is on your W2 tax form, then that sets off a red flag. Be careful when copying over amounts during tax preparation. 3. Small businesses reporting a loss. In fact, Schedule C is interesting for the simple reason that some people report income and losses incorrectly because there are no W-2 tax forms. Of course, there are plenty of legitimate losses in the business world. Just remember to keep records. 4. Meals and entertainment deductions. It is way too easy to abuse this one, and the IRS knows it. If you are going to use these deductions, again, keep good records and have legitimate reasons for these write-offs. 5. Home-office deductions. This is a special area of interest when it comes to Home-office deductions. To ensure you are correct, make sure that your home office and equipment are not used for anything other than legitimate business needs.