Kay's Kudos

Over the years, I've been honored to be named to various "best of" blog lists. I beg your indulgence for my horn tootin' of this recognition:

The Plutus Awards

Best Tax Blog
2011 Plutus Winner

Financial Bloggers Conference I

Participant, Ask the Expert Roundtable
Sept. 30-Oct. 3, 2011

50 Best Tax Season Blogs

B School
50 Best Blogs to Get You Through Filing Season
February 2011

Tax Authority

Don't Mess With Taxes
TopicsBest.com

Rating the top tax blogs
January 2011

20 Blogs Accounting Students Will Love

Rasmussen College School of Business
20 Best Blogs for Accounting Students, November 2010

64 Tax Blogs for Geeks and Wonks

CPA Trendlines
64 Tax Blogs Worth Reading, July 2010

Top 100 Accounting Advice Blogs

Online Accounting Degree
Top Accounting Advice Blogs, June 2010
Top 40 Saving Money Blogs

Online MBA Top 40
Saving Money Blogs, June 2010
50 Financial Gurus

50 Financial Gurus
Worth Following on Twitter
The Plutus Awards

Best Tax Blog
2009 Plutus Finalist
Top Tax Accounting Blogs

FINS-WSJ Digital Network
Top Five Tax Accounting Blogs
BloggingSuits.com

Blogs We Like
Nov. 27, 2009
Top Taxes Blogs

The Daily Reviewer's
Top Taxes Blogs
Blogs.com Top 10 Tax Blogs

MauledAgain's Fave 10
March 3, 2009
TaxProf's Top 10
Feb. 18, 2009
Philadelphia Inquirer Web Winners

Tax Season Aids
Jan. 18, 2009
Tax Top 10 of 2008

Tax Rascal's
Top 10 Tax Blogs of 2008
Dec. 18, 2008
Top 10 Tax Posts of 2008
Dec. 20, 2008
The Tax Lawyer's Blog

5 Best Tax Nerd Blogs:
The First Annual Rick Moranis Awards
Aug. 10, 2008
Top 100 Women Bloggers

Leading Female Bloggers
July 8, 2008
The Wall Street Journal

Consumer Tech Blog Watch
March 31, 2008
Top 100 PF Blogs

Sept. 4, 2007
Ask the Advisor

Top 100 PF Blogs
Top 11 Tax et al Blogs
Feb. 6, 2007
Austinist's Best of the Austin Blogs

Week of Aug. 14, 2006
Week of Feb. 13, 2006
AllFinancialMatters &
Money Blog Network

Blog of the Week
May 7-13, 2006
Top 10 Sources

Top 10 Sources for Taxes
April 22, 2006

Moneysmartz

Best of the Tax Blogs
March 3, 2006
Tax Prof

Top 10 Tax Stories of 2005
January 3, 2006
WebCPA

Recognized as a
Web Star of the Week
Work.com

Recognized as one of the
"Best Blogs and Forums"
for Finding Tax Help

Thanks to all the groups that named me to these lists. I promise to do my best to continue to earn your kudos.

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Today's Tax Tip

Shopping tips for August's 16 back-to-school tax holidays — Is your state one of the 16 holding a sales tax holiday this month? Before you head out to make tax-saving purchases, check out these 6 shopping tips. They could help you make the most of your state's no-tax August event. (Aug. 5, 2022)
The 2022 Tax Tips offer ways to file your annual return, along with post-filing advice, important tax news and, of course, ways to cut your current tax year bill. You'll find the monthly assemblages on their own respective pages: January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November and December. Remember, tax tasks and tips don't stop after you file your annual return!

COVID-19 & Taxes

Coronavirus has wreaked havoc
on the 2020 and 2021 tax seasons.
These three Coronavirus (COVID-19) and Taxes pages have details:
March-July 2020,
August-December 2020,
January-December 2021, and
January-… 2022
You can find medical coronavirus resource links further down this column.

All About Kay

OK, some about Kay

Kay Bell — Native Texan (the blog title totally makes sense now, right?). Professional journalist. Tax geek.

My Other Accounts

*************

Tick ... Tick ... Tick

Tax Season 2022 continues!

Tax Day 2022 is finally over … unless you're one of the millions who have more time to file — looking at you taxpayers abroad and those in major disaster areas — or you got an extension to file your 2021 tax year return. That's fine. In fact, the Internal Revenue Service appreciates some of us spreading out our filings, especially when we and the agency still are dealing with all the complications of COVID-19 and taxes.

That's why the ol' blog's focus now is on all y'all still working on returns. But I haven't forgotten my organized taxpayer readers, who are already looking for ways to reduce their 2022 tax year bills. Yep, that amount is adding up, but there are moves you can make. The monthly tips and reminders a little further down this column can help everyone, regardless of which tax year you're working on.

Those on extension should keep a keen eye on the countdown clock below. It will help you track the days tick, tick, ticking off toward that absolutely final fall filing due date of Oct. 17. Yep, it's a few days later this year.
Note: I'm in the Central Time Zone, so adjust accordingly for where you live.

Time for Tax Tasks

The Dog Days of Summer
are here!
For many of us, that means taking it easy like the pup below during these hot, sultry August days as summer winds down.

via GIPHY

But we can't dog it too much.
Making some potentially money-saving tax moves this August can really pay off. So let's get to it!

Aug. 1: School soon will be back in session. That means students need supplies. Good news for them and their parents: this month 15 states are holding back-to-school sales tax holidays. These no- or reduced-tax events are in Arkansas, Connecticut, Illinois, Iowa, Maryland, Massachusetts, Missouri, New Jersey, New Mexico, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, Virginia, and West Virginia.

Aug. 5: The tax holidays will help ease the high cost of school supplies and other qualifying purchases a bit, especially in these inflationary times. But some taxpayers are agetting more help. Sixteen states are issuing inflation relief payments. If you're in one of them, make sure your state tax department has your correct information, since that's how most of the inflation aid money will delivered.

Aug. 10: Restaurants are still recovering from the challenges of operating during a national health crisis, especially now that new COVID-19 variants are spreading. If your favorite eatery is now seating diners indoors, still take precautions, aka mask on until that meal arrives, please! If you're still doing take-out and deliveries, those business owners appreciate that support, too. And regardless of whether you're eating out or still getting food brought to your house, remember to tip your server or delivery person.

If a tip isn't included in your food delivery charge, click the image above to calculate how much to tip the person who brought it to you.

As for servers who now are back on the job, remember that your tips are taxable income. If you worked at least some of July at a job where you got gratuities, you need to account for them today if they came to at least $20 last month. Use Form 4070 to report your tips today to your employer.

Aug. 17: Did you get an extension back in April to file your tax return this fall? Well, that new due date — Oct. 17 — is now just two months away. But you don't have to wait until that day is, well, just days away. You can get to work on your tax paperwork now and be done with it any time before then.

Whenever you do get around to finishing your tax return, the IRS recommends you do so electronically. Check out ways to e-file at no cost, including via Free File, which is, as its name says, free. The official electronic filing webpage is Free File on IRS.gov is available to qualifying taxpayers until midnight, Eastern Time, on Oct. 17.

Free File this year is available for taxpayers whose adjusted gross income is $73,000 or less. That income level applies to all filing statuses. This year, 8 software programs are available to eligible filers. Spoiler: The two biggies, Intuit's TurboTax and H&R Block, are not among the choices. The two leading tax prep programs decided to end their participation in the program.

Aug. 22: The early part of the 2022 Atlantic/Gulf of Mexico hurricane season was, thankfully, not that bad. But August is when things tend to literally start heating up. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) National Hurricane Center says that most tropical storm activity occurs between mid-August and mid-October. If you haven't yet prepared — physically, financially, and tax wise — it's time to do so

Uncle Sam's official forecasters at the NOAA Climate Prediction Center expect 2022 to bring as many as 21 named storms, with six to 10 possibly becoming hurricanes. Three to six of those could reach major status, which is category 3, 4 or 5 with winds of 111 mph or higher. Regardless of the count, it only takes one to wreak havoc. The countdown clock below can help you keep track of how many more days you have to worry about tracking any size or type of tropical storms.

You also might want to check out the ol' blog's special Storm Warnings.
These multi-page collections of posts offer tax advice on preparing for, recovering from and helping those who sustain damages from the many ways that that weather goes wild. That includes claiming uninsured losses from a major natural disaster as an itemized tax deduction.

Aug. 26: The stock market has been up and down, then up and down, then … You get the idea. All the gyrations mean it's time to review your portfolio. Periodic rebalancing to meet your financial goals also could provide a tax break. If some of your taxable holdings have dropped in value, you can sell them and use the loss to offset other assets' gains. Remember, though that this tax loss harvesting strategy should be used only is you really want to sell the asset, not just use it to cut taxes. As the old (and apropos this month) saying goes, never let the tax tail wag the financial dog.

Aug. 31: If you've already filed your 2020 taxes, were you surprised by either the size of your refund or how much you owed? If so, now's the time to make sure that doesn't happen next year. The IRS' online estimator can help you more accurately adjust your payroll withholding.

Small Business Tax Calendar: Important filing, deposit and record keeping dates throughout the year that your company needs to know. You can get more tax calendar information at the IRS' online calendar page and view the full year's important business and individual tax dates in IRS Pub. 509.

State Tax Help

Don't forget your state taxes!
Forty-three states and D.C. collect personal income taxes. But even if you live in of the seven states without an income levy, you still face other state (and local) taxes.

State Tax Departments provides links to your state's Web page. The companion page, Tax Tidbits, is the compilation of blurbs about each state's tax laws. And for more state tax news, check out all our state tax bloggings.

Tax Forms

Thanks to our increased use of tax preparers and computer software, many of us don't see our tax forms until we sign and file them. But knowing what's on these documents, either in paper or digital form, and why the IRS wants it is key to understanding our tax system. And knowledge definitely is power, especially when it comes to tax savings. Find this valuable information in the ol' blog's special Talking Tax Forms page.

What are you looking for?

Looking for something in particular? Start with the Table of Contents.
Or check out the Archives, where you can review posts by month and category. Or enter specific keywords in the box below to search
Don't Mess With Taxes.

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Affiliate Books

The Truth
About Paying Fewer Taxes
Are you a tax geek? Got tax geek friends? Do you or they just want to make sure you don't overpay the IRS? Then my book, "The Truth About Paying Fewer Taxes," is for all y'all.

Look for it on bookstore shelves
or order a copy (or two!) from
Amazon or Barnes & Noble.
Find out more about my book and excerpted chapters at the FT Press
Truth About Paying
Fewer Taxes Web page.
You can read more
of Kay's tax insights in ...

Kay Bell helps you build
a solid tax foundation in
"Personal Finance: An Encyclopedia
of Modern Money Management"

Kay Bell breaks down taxes and
estate planning for millennials in
"Future Millionaires' Guidebook"

A collection of Kay Bell stories
is included in
"The Gambler's Guide to Taxes:
How to Keep More
of What You Win"

Tax Reading Room
You also might enjoy these other tax tips from some of my tax-writing colleagues:
Don't Mess With Taxes
is an Amazon Affiliate.
If you click on the product links above and/or buy the items,
I will be compensated.

0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 ...

Taxes are all about the numbers.
Check out these (mostly) weekly
By the Numbers figures.

Kudos Et Cetera

National Association
for Women in Communications
Winner, Best Personal Blog
2012, 2014 & 2017
Plutus Financial Bloggers Awards
Celebrating the Best
in Personal Finance
Winner, Best Tax Blog
2011 and 2013
Lifetime Achievement Nominee 2020

I gotta tell ya ...

AKA Disclaimer:
I am a professional journalist who has been covering tax issues since 1999.
I am not a professional tax preparer.
The content on Don't Mess With Taxes is my personal opinion based on my study and understanding of tax laws, policies and regulations. It is provided for your private, noncommercial, educational and informational purposes only. It is not a recommendation of any specific tax action(s) you should or should not take. Similarly, mentions of products or services are not endorsements. In other words, my ramblings on the ol' blog are free advice and you know what they say about getting what you pay for. That's why when it comes to filing your taxes, I urge you to get additional, professional, paid-for guidance from an accountant, Enrolled Agent or other qualified tax preparer who is familiar with your individual tax circumstances.

©©©©© & ®®®®®

Don't Mess With Taxes®
is a registered trademark
of S. Kay Bell.

All content on this site is
© 2005-2022 S. Kay Bell
dba Write Here, a division of
SKB Editorial Services, LLC
And a bit of housekeeping.
Note 1: Some of the links on this site
are affiliate links. That means that
if you click through from
a Don't Mess With Taxes link
and then buy the product,
I receive a commission.

Note 2: Links to outside content
might become inactive due to changes
at the copy's originating website.
If you discover dead links, please e-mail me the details. Thanks.

Note 3: The banner art for the ol' blog
is courtesy Pictures of Money
via Flickr Creative Commons.

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COVID-19 Resources

Need help finding a coronavirus vaccine in the United States?
Call 1-800-232-0233
or TTY 1-888-720-7489.
More information and resources at:
CDC Vaccines
CDC Booster Shots
HHS Combat COVID
USA.Gov COVID Info

August 2022

Tell it to the Hill

While it's easy to rail at the IRS, for the most part we can thank — or blame — our tax laws on Congress and the White House. So if you have an issue with tax legislation or want a tax bill passed, you need to let your federal legislators and the White House occupant know of your concerns. You can find out who in Washington, D.C., to contact (and how), as well as get information on your local lawmakers for matters, tax or otherwise, closer to home, at USA Gov.

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Don't Mess With Taxes

Translating taxes into money-saving English

Kay's Kudos

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