With tax season fast approaching, sleepless nights and hair pulling become commonplace for many people. While filing your taxes can seem like an insurmountable task, with the support of your financial advisor it can be a lot less daunting. Your advisor\u2019s in-depth knowledge of your financial situation can provide insights that your accountant may not be privy to. These insights can prove to be very helpful in tax planning (and preventing tax-stress induced baldness).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Here are five ways your financial advisor can help you prepare for tax time:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
1. Preparing a schedule of your tax slips.<\/strong> Your advisor can compile a list of the tax slips you can expect to receive and denote when you will receive them. This will help ensure you don\u2019t miss anything and\/or don\u2019t file your taxes too soon. Since March 31st is the mailing deadline for some tax slips (ie. T3s), you may not have everything you need to file until the beginning of April.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 2. Helping you register for online tax information access.<\/strong> Most financial companies provide online access to your tax slips. For example, Raymond James offers online access for clients where they can view all tax slips issues by the institution to ensure they have everything needed. This ensures that you will get your tax slips faster than waiting for them to arrive in the mail and also helps prevent things from going missing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 3. Preparing a capital gain\/loss report for your taxable investments.<\/strong> This will save your accountant time, and therefore save you money, when reporting your capital gain\/loss information.<\/p>\n\n\n\n