Mystery shoppers are always looking for a way to make more money and to save time. There are many steps that mystery shoppers like you can take to save time and to make more money, and some of the best tips that you can put to use today relate to tax season. Taxes can take a lot of time to prepare, and they can strip you of some of your hard-earned cash too. By following these important mid-year tax tips, you can most easily save time and money through your mystery shopping efforts.
Monitor Your Expenses
First, you should actively monitor all of your expenses. The fact is that many mystery shoppers may spend a considerable amount of time each year around tax time trying to hunt down receipts and prepare a tally of their expenses for the past year. It is much easier to enter your receipts into a spreadsheet and to file them away when you have the receipts in hand rather than to hunt those receipts down and to enter them all into a spreadsheet all at once. Therefore, take time now to bring your expense tracking spreadsheet up-to-date. Then, keep your expense spreadsheet updated throughout the rest of the year.
Keep a Travel Log
You should also pause and consider what your travel log looks like. Keeping a travel log enables you to write off mileage as a tax deduction. This can help you to save a considerable amount of money on your taxes. Recreating a mileage log is not recommended by the IRS, and it can take a considerable amount of time to do. A better option is to start a travel log today if you do not already have one. If you do have one, consider taking a closer look at it to make sure that all of the mileage has been tallied up to this point. If not, bring it current.
Keep Your Accounting Up-to-Date
A final tip to consider is to keep your accounting documents up-to-date. Income and expenses alike can easily get out of hand when you are busy working on mystery shopping assignments. Spend a few minutes today reviewing your bookkeeping practices. Now is the ideal time to update a system that is not quite working for you or to bring the data up-to-date. By taking this step today, you can most easily estimate your tax burden for the year and can make decisions about whether to purchase tax deductible items now versus later. For example, if you are thinking about purchasing a new laptop computer for mystery shopping, you may be able to review your current accounting statements to determine if you should buy a new computer now or wait until the next tax year.
By following some of these mid-year tax tips, you will make it easier to file your taxes when tax day rolls around. More than that, you may find more tax deductions that can save you money, and you can make financial decisions that can also help you to reduce your tax burden.