We got our tax refund deposited in our checking account on Wednesday--very fast this year! We filed on March 3, so it took just over a week. Woot! More for the unemployment survival fund!
With taxes on my mind, I thought I'd mention this. For the past few years, residents in states without a state income tax (Alaska, Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Washington, Wyoming) could take a federal income tax deduction for any sales taxes paid. There is a standard deduction you can take, or you can keep track of all your sales tax expenditures. You can take the higher of the two as the deduction. Congress has not yet decided if they are going to extend this for 2009, or as a permanent deduction, or get rid of it, but I'm hedging my bet and continuing to track my sales tax expenditures (our sales tax here in Washington is 9%).
I have been tracking my sales tax expenditures for several years, and have always had more in sales tax than the standard deduction. Tracking it is not hard, just requires a little bit of dilgence. I have set up a simple spreadsheet with a group of columns (Date, Store, and Amount) for each month. I have the amount totaled automatically by Excel, and also calculate a total amount automatically. I log the tax amount in the spreadsheet, then put the receipt in a regular business-sized envelope (one envelope for each month). It makes finding receipts easy if ever I need to do a return, too. At the end of the year, I print out the spreadsheet and put it with my tax information, and put all the year's envelopes full of receipts into a labeled storage box.
It's worth the effort, I think. If anyone would like a blank copy of my spreadsheet, please leave your email address in a comment using (at) instead of the @ sign.
