tick. tock. it's the tax clock.

Nothing like sitting down with a nice big glass o' milk, a bag of double stuff mint Oreo cookies and having all the bliss removed cause it's time to fill out the 2009 tax forms! But seriously, taxes do have a wonderful way of giving me a great big kick in the pants to be much better organized and well documented for next year. And the great news... It's still January (at least for one day) and therefore completely doable for 2010! 

(image from here.)

My taxes are filed, the check has been written and surprisingly I feel excited about it. Something about knowing that this is MY business and that I dot my own 'i's' and cross my own 't's' feels empowering! But of course on the flip side as I filled out electronically (because my sun colored all over the form and was no longer usable - should picked a safer spot!) I realized that there were things I should be doing to be more prepared and even more in control, 


Here are a few things that I will be keeping better track of:


Filing receipts by categories based on write-offs! (here are a few)
Packaging
Equipment
Software
Travel
Computer
Services


Differentiating between Sessions and Sales!
In my state (WA.) the session fee is taxed at 1.5% as a B&O tax where as products (prints, albums, etc.) are taxed as Retail at almost 10%. At the last minute I was scrounging to separate the session fees from the products as I don't want to miss any opportunities at 1.5%. So this year I will make that easy to read and see. 
I also have lots of clients from Oregon and Canada I also need to mark them separately as I do not charge resale tax for them.