this is lean team angle and this is a live video of what casts of my show in the c suite where we bring you tips tools and resources small business owners entrepreneurs and other professionals who are thinking about starting their own businesses i'm excited for the guess we have today ms tina parmigiano one thing we were just talking about with some of the people who got here early is that many of us have our own businesses and we kind of know those inside and out where when it comes to those dang blasted taxes as i call them we don't really know which way to turn or even where to start sometimes so i'm excited about having tina here she started her tax business parmesan attacks why services over twenty years ago and she literally built it from scratch to the point now where she service in clients over fifteen different states when i tell you that she knows this stuff she knows it and one of the things that i like most about it  about tina is that she takes this really confusing information and she speaks about it in very plain language so that people can understand and that's important to me and i'm sure it's important to other people as well a couple things you may not know about tina she's also contributing author to two books and she's also a certified speaker with the john maxwell team so stay posted for some of the speaking engagements that she has coming up on the horizon i'm excited about all the things that are in her future so i'm glad to have her here without any further delay i'm going to go ahead and bring tina up and welcome her to c suite life everybody hey there and there oh thank you for having me i'm excited to have you we're going to jump right in tina ok for anyone who wants more information about tina i'm going to share her linked in information at the end because that's where you can get her bio when you can find out about some of the things and that's where she's going to start to post some of the things that she's going to be working on with the future because we don't have that much time to use i want to jump right in and pick your brain and go ahead and get started you know one of the things that i think many of us have done and it's probably f at this point is take all ever see him we put them all in one big box maybe even a shoe box and here we go walking off to the accountant i mean we don't do shoe boxes anymore but maybe some people do but you get my point so let's start here let's start with what not to bring when we come to meet with an accountant to file a taxes yet don't bring your shoe boxes now i've had that before i've had eighteen gallon to held with nothing but receipts coke bottle cases those cardboard boxes they were loaded with receipts from from different clients those are things that and less you're looking to pick a lot of money so that you are taxed repair can do you have all your receipts do yourself a favor and do them a favor and i'd advise them yourself and put them out as long as you have your receipts you're good to go they don't need to see all of your all of your individual receipts so play it safe on your end and on their end and itemized them and don't have this huge boxes we are not the storage company and sometimes feels that way sometimes i think i'm a storage  for somebody else yes so we come with all our stuff and then you kind of have to plow through all of that i'm sure that makes it even make a process even more mundane than it needs to be right especially if you don't separate if you need to separate all of your receipts into the category think go into and take out your personal receipts that don't have anything to do with taxes and other people don't need to know where you spend your money other than yourself when you're trying to budget your your own finances so if you have your own business take your personal receipt separate them from your business and those are the ones that you're going to itemize perfect you know before we wrap up i want to spend some time talking a little bit about if you don't mind sharing some more tips on because they organized  kind of where this whole thing starts and how can they start that early on so that they're not at the last minute you know just grabbing everything and pushing in and you get stressed totally stressed out over it sorry but you share some tips at the end if you know mine were not a problem that be great you know one of the things i was pleased to see on your newsletter and i'm going to give the link to the newsletter but you guys need to check it out is that there are a number of tax breaks that have been revived or two thousand seventeen including some things around to wish and cost and some whole energy efficient things so can you talk a little bit about some of the tax breaks that have been revived we could still take advantage for this tax  school and say you're in grad school and you run out you've got your lifetime learning that sometimes the course is you're not doing full time you can go ahead and take that tuition and fees and that's good for your books for computer  lab work that you have to do all the different things that pertains to those classes you can still take those issue here it actually signed off on getting rid of them for twenty seven thousand but they decided to bring them back and that's great for a lot of people that are doing continuing education courses i was going to ask you about that's not necessarily just college right getting any kind of continuing ed courses will qualify for that they have to be in line with with a through one of the universities even if it's an accounting certificate for say and you're not getting a degree in that but you're taking classes you don't qualify because you're not going full time for the  term the lifetime learning credit but you can do the tuition credits with the fees and then that way you can at least get reimbursed for that time but this it's running out at the end of twenty seventeen this is the last time and you  can for this year ok well that's still good to know there are quite a lot of people who are in those kinds of programs what should they bring to show proof that they've taken those courses to know how they can bring the receipts right from the college if it's an online course you can bring your on line receipts that it was paid for just any kind of documentation an invoice some of the colleges or your certification that you receive for that and you get as you sign out you can  give you a receipt that tells you how many credits you talk or what the certification course was how much before whether it was paid in full or not because you can only take it if you paid for it that year you can't  insurance and home energy efficiency improvements i did limp reading something around them on the home energy they're doing the one one more year actually twenty seventeen twenty eight hundred they're going to be keeping that and it's a five hundred down like if you put in energy efficient windows if you do energy efficient how water heater and your run air conditioning unit your furnace is all energy efficient you can get up to a five hundred dollars credit on that but it's a it is now up to you they're revising it right now you still have the full depth of your mortgage insurance that you can take the edge my paying for people that have f h a loans the m i p is going away at the end of the year they decided to give it one more year for twenty seventeen because a lot of people still counted on that and it was all the way to the end so they put it back on the list for twenty seventeen the mortgage interest is going to be changing this is the last year who are the big that you can take whatever your interest is and putting it on your your schedule any of your income tax free chair as a matter of fact you the mortgage debt forgiveness if you have gone bankrupt against your home this is the only year that you can this is the final year that you could take your debt forgiveness on your on your mortgage that you claimed in your bankruptcy as well so there's there are some major things that you're going to have to start looking towards who are twenty thousand and move in covered a lot of things are going away this year or after this year i should say after this year well let me ask you this for people who have already filed their taxes and now they're hearing this for the first time is it too late for there was anything they can do to take advantage of these breaks for this year they can actually amend their tax return the tuition and fees they can if they've had substantial amount that they laid out it would be a good thing to check with your tax preparer they can run a quick little scenario with it and you wouldn't you know a great down and see if it would be worth filing an amended return any of these things that you didn't think were going forward that you can still claim you can always just talk to your tax professional and see if it would work for you depending i all depends on your income as well and what your deductions were after that year if it's it may be feasible that like my bank they did not say and when i received my my ten ninety eight for my mortgage interest they left off they the n y p all together i just got a letter from them two weeks ago reinstating it and sending me that information so that i could play and being a tax preparer doing everybody x else's taxes i could have mine yes i'm not worried about fixing mine yet but everybody if you've got that because you're everybody could be quite a quite a big chunk of change and you know as you say that what is the actual last official death think you should clarify this a lot of people know to actually file within the timeline april seventeenth is the last day to file your taxes you have until midnight if you're taking it to a tax professional or you're doing it you're on line you have until midnight if you're going to the post office and you mailing it by hand good luck with finding a post office it's going to be open that way because it actually has to be stamped with the postal stamp that day so you can't drop it off at ten o'clock at night because it's not going to be mailed out to the following day so you'll actually be a day late on that if you file an extension that goes all the way through october fifteenth and then but if you owe the i r s money you have to make an s to made a payment with that extension form it you send dead or you'll be late and you'll you will get penalties barnes for ok that's good to know so let's talk about that again so the extension how late can you file for an extension up until the seventeenth or is there a cut off if you do but fifteen no it will seventeenth  r the extension and you can do that online very simply or you can have if you have a regular tax preparer they'll do it for you with no problem if it's one short for they send it in and it gets electronically file and you're good to get out if you  money if you think that you're going to owe money because it is an estimate then you need to send the money along with that an estimated amount you can send that in the mail you have to have the postmark on the seventeenth or you can go online and  through wonderful awesome so this is a perfect segue tina so let's talk about getting an early start for tax year two thousand and eighteen we got two thousand and seventeen kind of out of the way there are a lot of changes and i think people have all kinds of questions in nx to around what in the world it changes so frequently so can we talk a little bit about some of the changes that are on the horizon for two thousand and eighteen tax year yeah there are some major changes  for those that file i am i used to have versus the standard deduction our standard deduction is basically going to double so if you're a single person filing your standard deduction is going to go from six thousand up to fit a little over six thousand to twelve thousand dollars and for married filing joint it's going to go from the twelve thousand will over twelve thousand to twenty four thousand so with that in mind that is going to alleviate a lot of people filing a schedule a four i did my status because if you're married filing joint you have to have more than twenty four thousand dollars in deductions before it's even worth filing it versus filing your standard one thing that's going to go away that's going to hurt some families is the exemption the individual exemptions if you're married and you've got three children you are getting who are thousand to fifty dollars per person in the house that have businesses where they work for a company that you do and lot of non reimbursed business expenses say you use your own cellphone that you used to claim you drill around and used your vehicle to do sales calls and you put in your own gas and you just got a small amount for reimbursement that is all gone any miscellaneous i do my state actions is going away even what you pay for tax preparation that is going away but your union dues all of these big things these are things that you're going to have to look at after you fire your twenty seventeen taxes look at these numbers because you're going to have to find some way to make adjustments so that you won't be owing in twenty eighteen or that at least you'll break even or you didn't get a refund for that i'm glad you brought that up because can we stay on that for a second about the whole break even i know i phone account for years and the advice has been that you want to try to break even although i think in our minds are always thinking i want a refund i want to refund can you talk a little bit about that you know what are your your thoughts on planning ahead and kind of tax planning so that you do kind of break even or is that just a person's point of view what do you think about what that is the best way to go because that means you're keeping your money in your pocket and not giving it to the s or to the state of new jersey or whatever state that you're living in you have more control of where your money's going so the best way to do it is to break even i know that there are a lot of people i talk to a lot of my clients about it and they like to see that refund they feel better when they're getting that big chunk of change come january because they overextend it at christmas time or they went out spend all of it too much for new year's and they rely on that money you only problem is is that sometimes things happen and if you have a delay where they're holding that money or if something changes at last minute and they're not going to be doing that you have a big fluctuation of let you make it back so my advice would be to try and break even and instead of giving the iris more of you or your money out of your paycheck you keep it and put that into a savings that way you're the one that gets to collect the interest on it instead of and that way you have a little bit even at the end if you will have ten bucks i'd rather own them ten bucks or then you know that having and keeping more of my money throughout the year because you don't know maybe gens going to come and so money i would say try to breakeven wonderful thank you for that you know i don't know if people have heard that before or maybe we're just so accustomed to kind of got to get their refund we start at the top of the show talking about what not to bring and you started to allude to some things that we can do can we shift times fly and can we shift gears and maybe share some tips tina on how people can stay organized so that they're not so stressed out you know as the techs year approaches or not to text you but the time to file your taxes book is any tips that you can share what happy because stay organized throughout the year specifically business owners  especially business you know that they're the heart of my direct sales people i know there's a lot of you guys out there the best thing to do if you want to just keep it simple to where you're not racking your brain because you don't want to have to deal with a new program or anything simple were easier for you and then this way you can file away at the end of the year is take two different envelopes let your income envelope someone so that on your invoices that your clients have paid it will go into there's so many think that i find that when people bring me their their business deductions you know i have business expenses they don't have any house you know the office expense it's like wait a minute you don't you don't send invoices to anybody you don't have you know ink in a printer all of these things are tax deductible these are things that you need to have in place even if you don't have the individual seat if you use a credit card for everything make sure that you print off that credit card statement and put that in there and highlight what is your business and that's that's a whole nother topic with credit cards but that you know that will help you in that but do that for every month and then that way at the end of each month or the beginning of the following month you take out those receipts and not at all your income that you received and put it on the front of that envelope on your expenses add up how much you spent on going out taking your clients to to dinner or to lunch and talking business places that you have to travel to if you have to go to an event vendor tables that people put up and have to expense all of these different things there's there's so many different deductions that you can put on there but if i did my that put him on the front of that that were the end of the year if you add up those twelve numbers and go you've got it and that's what you take to your accountant instead of all the receipts you don't have to have them as long as you have them to back up those numbers  go i love that advice and so to think you were talking about the mileage expenses right traveling we're always on the specially direct sales or if you have clients who are always on the road but also we do lot of we turn a lot of workshops in trainings that we're paying for on to our both of those things that people should be pointed to as well right you know if you're if you're traveling if you go way to seminars when day of dance anything that you have to pay that's part of your education learning for your business as long as it is business related and it helps grow your business or art teaches you new things that you use in your business those are all tax deductible things that you claim on your tax return you can claim your airfare going to and from and even if say your you are going to orlando for a three day event and you decide you want to stay the extra two days you can stay those extra two days and but the first three days that you are there that hotel and everything that is all expensive all just the part that is for personal is is your trip so you can actually put your airfare to and from that is expense down because you have to come back no matter what so there are different things that you're into you getting a rental car there are so many expenses when you do travel and for mileage i suggest if you have a cell phone get my like you on the air because that tracks every single mile and q there's a free version if you do more than forty trips of a month then you can you then you can upgrade it to where i think it's a it's a very small fee for the free year i mean for the full year  otherwise you couldn't use it free for up to forty travels back and forth also if you know that there are several of them are quite a few of them have been you know they've been personal or you've been writing in somebody's car and they track it or you write to pay attention to how far you went and what your round trip looked like you know one thing that we talked about offline i want to make sure we bring this scene as we start to wrap up and take some questions is people who go to the doctor a lot to get medications in the pharmacy you says something about printouts you want to talk a little bit about that sure war of the heart every place that you go whether you go to the doctor the guinness the you know specialist take your mileage because you can you can actually claim your mileage for that people you received or what you do is at the end of the year you can call your pharmacist and they will give you a full printout of everything that you had to purchase at the pharmacy and as far as medications medical equipment that you had to get those types of things your doctor's office your dentist they will all give you a a printout if you ask that some of them will actually charge you for it so i advise to keep your own records for her or the doctors and things like epic ok you can also go online to your insurance company and check out on line about at doing the co pay but keep track of your health or your calendar or just write it down you know that you've been to the doctor twenty five times this year or you go once a month that's twelve times you know it and that's an easy way to do it and one quick thing on on medical for twenty seventeen and twenty eighteen on your itemized deductions you're they went back to the seven and a half percent instead of the ten percent so for twenty seventeen and twenty eighteen make sure you keep records for that which it's good and also for the state of new jersey a lot of people don't know this in the state of new jersey but it's only two percent above your income so a lot of people don't bring their medical and i have seen people that have been able to say have like a three or four thousand dollars deduction from their medical off the state  new jersey you know since they never did it before tina thank you for all that information i actually had a lot of britons both appear together i actually had some people that if guys i said this at the top of the show you can either post a question in chat for tina if you have one and or you can click the button below that says ask a question awesome thank you so much i it was a pleasure i knew i knew that today was going to be fantastic i am putting our website here for those of you who this may be the first time listening to one of our shows first of all welcome but i want you to visit our website station is x dot com and you can get more information about some upcoming segments this replay will make this available guys go ahead and connect with tina on linked in and please share you know just share a common or two about what you thought about our show today that's important people are looking at that and that's another place where it's a be a great place to connect for puja business we do a lot of networking here because that's what this is all about so again thank you tina any more questions every night hey just some other feedback coming in thank you fantastic we learn so much more about taxes that's some of the feedback thank you guys for that that's why we do this and as i said i'm just going back to where we started about eighteen and her speaking engagements i'm going to her horn right now and i want to put it out there she's going to be doing more of this and there's something we've been talking about called texted bits with pleasure thank you everyone awesome thank you everyone thank you for everyone for tuning in if you have any questions about anything that we do hear any of our coming segments feel free to visit our website at staging exacts dot com that's staging exacts dot com and we look forward to seeing all of you again in the c suite take care  right thanks for tuning in