Sales Tax Deductions

Yes, sales tax deductions are alive and well through 2011 tax years. The IRS requires that you make a choice between writing off your state income tax or sales tax. For those of you that live in Texas or other states that have no state income tax this is an easy choice to make. However, If you are required to file a state income tax be sure to look into your states available deductions. They may allow for sales tax deductions.

So... how much do you pay a year in sales tax? Great question right? I tried one year to start saving all our receipts in a shoe box. It didn't happen. So I tried to keep track of just the "Big" expenditures to write off (Which is allowed). I'm always looking for ways of doing things better and a few month ago I discovered a product that becomes my shoe box. Some of you may have seen the TV commercial featuring "Neat Desk". I decided to give this product a try and used there free 30 day trial.

Neat Desk is basically a scanner linked to software that does some pretty cool stuff. I already have a scanner so I wasn't that excited to have another scanner on my desk if you know what I mean. And I already use quicken in keeping track of our books. However, the software is what makes this product unique. It's a time saver! For me it does 2 things really great.

1. It scans in my receipts and stores each one in desired folder. Automatically reads the receipts and posts vendor, date, sales tax, and total. I just trouble shoot a little bit.
   Totals up sales taxes and receipts totals. Very cool in organizing all receipts for business and personal.
2. Scan several documents to folders I desire to have. This clearly cleans my desk off! Love this feature!

Like any product there are other features that you might enjoy but as I said, I primarily purchased this product to easily keep track of my sales tax receipts and not be a burden to recall these receipts and retrieve totals. When making your decision to purchase keep in mind that the sales deduction has not been extended to 2012 by congress yet. There is a possibility this deduction could go away in our current economic situation. I always wanted to know how much I payed in sales taxes for the year and this product will help me with that.

Be sure to check with your professional accountant on sales tax deductions.

Dave Alexander