How To Identify Missing Tax Documents During Tax Season

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Are you trying to sort out your end of year tax documents? Many taxpayers are perplexed as to how they're supposed to determine whether they actually received all their documents, especially because the barrage of forms begins January 1st and doesn't end until March 31st. Here are a few ways that you can check to make sure you have everything that you should.

Check Your Prior Year Documents

The first thing you should do is go over all the documents you had in the prior year to make sure that you have the same documents. If you did not receive any of the documents you received last year in the current year, there may be items that are missing. As long as very little has changed in your financial situation, you should be getting the same documents every year. If your documents tend to change from year to year, you may want to go back a few years and check each document that you have received in the past.

Go Over Your Accounts One by One

The following accounts should all have forms associated with them: bank accounts (interest income), home mortgages (mortgage income), property taxes, W2 wages, 1099 wages, auto loan interest and retirement accounts. This is not an exhaustive list of all the documents that you should receive, but it is the vast majority of forms that people will get every tax season. If you did not receive a tax document from one of these accounts, you can often download them online.

Make Sure Your Income Matches

If you work for multiple companies or operate as an independent contractor, you might not be absolutely certain whether you've received all of your income forms. The easiest way to verify this is to add up all the deposits you made to your bank accounts and then add up all of the forms that you received. If the amount reported on the forms is significantly less than the amount that you added to your bank account, it's likely that you are missing some forms. You can then track this based on your deposits. 

Remember, even if you don't receive a form, you're still required to report accurate information. Not receiving a tax document cannot be seen as an excuse for not reporting income or other related information. That is why it's so important to make sure that you get everything as soon as possible. Talk to places like Hy Appelbaum CPA for more information.


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