What Forms Do I Need to File Basic Taxes - Beginners Guide

Hi, my name is Loma. I teach entrepreneurs business and money management skills. We're gonna go over what paperwork you need to have in hand, ready to go before we file your tax return. Wanna make sure you have every single W-2 from every single job. It's very important that you have it. Think of it like this, the way that you can determine whether or not you should have received a W-2 is whether or not you received the actual check in the tax year. So say if you started a job in December, and you started, say, the last week of December, but your first paycheck from that job didn't come until January. Well, the year that that check came is what year that money counts for. So if you didn't receive it in December, that means it doesn't count for the tax year that just ended that year. But if it came in January, and January is last year, then last year's income would include January, and therefore you would have to make sure you include that job, whether you worked at that job for one day or you worked on it for the whole year. It goes by when you received the actual payment. Another form you might have gotten is the 1099-INT. Basically, banks give that out, generally speaking, for if you earned any interest. Say if you have a savings account and you earned a few dollars, even if you earned a dollar or a few cents or something, normally they'll send out a 1099-INT, and you'll need that when we file your tax return. But if you didn't earn interest on any of your accounts, then you more than likely won't have this form. Then there's the 1099-DIV. Basically, the DIV means dividends. So if you had any investment accounts and dividends were paid out to you, then you should be expecting a 1099-DIV. Again, that's for investment accounts that you would have had over the year. You may have earned a few dollars here and there, or you may have earned a lot. Whatever that amount is, if you received a 1099-DIV, or if you were expecting one, you'll want to inquire directly with the investment company on whether or not they're going to be issuing you one. Often this is available online to download depending on the company that you're doing business with. The next form is the 1099-G, and that is for unemployment. So if you recall receiving— remember, it's kind of the same way as W-2s or any other income. If you received unemployment money last year, it'll get reported on this tax return, and more than likely you should have received a 1099-G. If you received unemployment income and you don't have a 1099-G, you either need to wait for it to come in, or you can contact the unemployment service and let them know that you are missing your 1099-G, or ask them if they're planning to issue you one. If they're not, either way, you need to know the amount that you actually received all of last year so that you can report that on your taxes. Again, the unemployment office is going to report that to the IRS, so you want to include that. That way we can look at the full picture before we actually submit your tax return. Some of you might have a 1099-R, and that's if you received any retirement income. Say if you, you're no longer working, or if you're kind of at the end of your working days, you might have a W-2 here and there, but then you also might have a 1099-R, which is the retirement money, like pension funds or anything else that you would have earned from your job previously. So if you have a 1099-R, we're going to need that as well. Those of you that receive Social Security income, if you received any last year, you should be expecting an SSA-1099. This form will show all the Social Security benefits that you received, as well as if they withheld any federal income tax from your Social Security benefits amount so that we can report that as well. If you paid on a student loan last year, it's possible that you also paid interest on those student loans, and if you did, you should be expecting a 1098-E, and that is the tax form that you would receive that would show the exact amount of interest that you paid along with the payments that you were making. So say if you were making a $50 a month payments on your student loan, a portion of that may have gone towards interest, and that interest is tax deductible when you file your tax return. So if you haven't received it, you might need to log into your student loan account and it might be downloadable there. But if you don't find it there, you can always call them and ask them whether or not they're planning to issue you one. Or you might have to manually calculate by looking through your payment history and seeing how much of the payments that you made went towards your loan versus how much went towards interest, and then just add up everything that went towards interest. Okay, college attendees, if you attended college last year, you should have received a 1098-T, and that would— that form right there would report how much tuition that you paid, how much scholarships you would have received, if any taxes were withheld, all that information would be on that form. And again, that's the 1098-T. All colleges don't necessarily issue one. There are some kind of breakpoints at which they're not required to, but here's again my same recommendation as with all the other forms: contact them, see if they're going to issue you one. If they aren't planning to issue one, you're going to have to do the manual calculations on how much tuition that you actually paid last year and how much in scholarships that you received last year, because that information will need to be entered on your actual tax return when we file it. If you paid more tuition than you received scholarship money, then you could be owed a, a refund or get a credit on your tax return. But if you received more in scholarship money than you had in expenses, uh, across the board for your tuition, your books, uh, any other, uh, learning expenses that you had, if you supplies, all of that. If it, if that adds up, if your scholarship adds up to more than your expenses, then this is going to count towards your income. And again, this information would have already been provided to the IRS. So you want to make sure you provide accurate information when you're filing your tax return. So some of you may have received a 1099-C, and that's for canceled debts. So an example of canceled debt would be if you had a vehicle, it was repo'd, or you had to turn it in because you weren't able to afford the payments on the vehicle. Once the bank sells the vehicle and reduces how much your overall balance was by the amount they sold your vehicle for, the leftover balance is still your responsibility. So say if you had a $20,000 vehicle auto loan, you had to turn it in, or it was repo'd, and the balance was $18,000, then at that point, they would try to sell the vehicle once it's turned in or once they repo it. And say if they sold it for $5,000, 'cause they do those type of ridiculous things where they sell it for such a cheap amount just to get it off their books. But what they're going to do is they're going to take that $18,000 balance, subtract the $5,000 that they received for it, and they're going to hold you responsible for that $13,000 debt. Now, what happens in the case of a 1099-C is after they have not been able to collect that amount from you, what they'll do is they'll send you this form and they're writing it off on their books. But what they're doing essentially is requiring you to include it on your tax return as income. And if you have to include it on your income, there are a couple of things that you can do to where, you know, you're thinking about, okay, if my income is say $10,000 a year and you're adding on this $13,000 on top of that for this year, that could raise your taxes. But we have a few, uh, bits of information that'll help you get through that part and see whether or not you're going to actually have to pay taxes on that $13,000, or if we can reduce the amount. There's a few different things that we have to go through in order to figure out what we can do with that canceled debt, but we do definitely have to include that on your tax return because the IRS has already received this information if you've received it. The next form that you might have received is a 1095-E. A specifically. We don't need your 1095-B or C. We only need your 1095-A, and this is the form that you would receive if you had health insurance through the marketplace, um, also known as Obamacare. The reason why we need this form is because the way that the marketplace insurance works is it's based on the projected income that you provide the marketplace at the time when you apply for the health insurance. They basically had you guess, okay, what do you think you'll make the following year? And then they give you credit towards your health insurance to offset your actual premium, your health insurance premium, based on what you think your income will be. Well, when you're filing your tax return, that's when we're going to kind of have to balance out what actually happened and compare it to what you told them would happen. So if you reported too much income or if you reported too little income, they're going to see what type of credit that you would have gotten, either more credit or you would have gotten less credit based on what actually happened. And then here we kind of settle up the books on whether or not you owe them or they owe you any more credits. So it is important to have your 1095-A when you get ready to file your tax return. The next item is for those of you that have children. If you had a child and you paid for daycare, The daycare that you paid could possibly help you on your tax return. So you'll need to gather either a formal statement from the person who provided the daycare, and normally we're looking for a daycare provider here that has a company name, a tax ID number, uh, we need their address, and we need the total amount that was actually paid to them last year. If you paid it to a person, you also will need to gather that information. They are supposed to be including this on their own tax return as income, so they might or might not be willing to give you their Social Security number and address and formal, you know, name and all the information that you need in order for you to get that tax credit if you're eligible for it. So that would be a situation that you're dealing with, but should be providing you this information as well. Their name, their address, their tax ID number, and the amount that you actually spent with them. Last few items are again, your Social Security, number for yourself as well as for anybody else that you're going to be putting on your tax return. You'll need your birth date as well as each person that you'll be adding to your tax return. You'll need your current address. Make sure you have the right zip code and everything, especially if you've moved recently. You'll want to make sure the mailing address is correct. That way, in case the IRS has to mail you any paperwork, they have the exact address. You're going to need your email address. Make sure you're able to access it. Make sure you're able to receive the emails and check them all of that. You also need to provide your phone number that you'll be using on your tax return. This is just for filing purposes. You shouldn't expect any phone calls from the IRS because they don't normally pick up the phone and just call. The IRS would rather send you a letter than to call you, so you don't have to worry about them calling you. The next item is going to be your bank account number. You'll need the routing number as well as the bank account number. You'll want to use this either for receiving your tax refund, or you can use it to pay your tax balance if you end up owing a balance by the time we finish filing. The last thing you want is for the IRS to send your tax refund to somebody else's bank account. So make sure you have that bank account, the routing number and the account number exactly correct. You'll also need to know if it's a checking or a savings account. And the last item on the list is your last year's tax return, because we'll need your adjusted gross income from your last year's tax return. And that's also referred to as the AGI. If you didn't file a tax return last year, then you'll be entering zero when we get to that part. But if you did file a tax return last year, we're going to need to know that adjusted gross income off the last year's tax return. So it's best that you have that ready to go so that if we need to look at it, you'll have access to it. If you don't have access to your last year's tax return, you can always call the IRS. The number is 1-800-829-1040. 4-0, and just listen for the prompts where they ask you, are you calling in to find out what your adjusted gross income is for last year? And just follow the information that it asks for. They'll ask you for your social and things like that. Just make sure you answer all those questions, and they should provide it to you through an automation. You won't even have to talk to a person, and they'll give you your adjusted gross income. That way you can use that to file your tax return. And this is something you can do before you've even received all of your paperwork. That way you have that ready to go. And that about wraps up the tax documents and information you need to gather in order for us to move forward and file your tax return. 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