Use Money throughout the year to help plan your tax strategy, and at tax time to assist in preparing your taxes.

As part of your financial information system for organizing your financial documents, you should develop a simple and effective system for organizing the papers you need to prepare your taxes and provide the necessary paper trail in the event of an audit.

File your receipts, reconciled statements, and paid bills. ThereÆs no presumption of innocence with the Internal Revenue Service: If an expense is tax-deductible, the burden of proof is yours. File your tax-related receipts, reconciled statements, and paid bills by category so you can validate the numbers on your tax return. The IRS can audit you up to seven years after filing, so be sure to keep the necessary files.

Prepare for taxes. When you get a bank statement, staple any canceled checks or carbon copies of checks you may have written for tax-deductible expenses to the corresponding receipts (or note the check numbers on them), which should already be categorized in envelopes or folders. This makes it easier to review actual transactions with those reported in the Tax-Related Transactions report and included in the Tax Software report totals. Your documentation is easily assembled should the IRS or your tax accountant ever need to see it.