Hopefully, you followed some of the suggestions we outlined a couple of years ago in Kick off the New Year... by getting organized! to organize your records. If you did, great! This will make filing your tax returns a lot easier this year. It also means that you and your tax advisor can spend more time on tax and financial planning issues for 2014 vs. looking back to 2013.

Go through your house and garage and see what items you have not used in the last two years and donate them to charity. You can clean out space for all the new toys that are coming and receive a tax deduction for it!

This is the time of year in our CPA practice that we work with small business owners and individuals to perform tax checkups to help them project their tax liabilities for 2013 and make tax saving recommendations of moves that they can make between now and year-end.

This helpful link was provided by the National Association of Tax Professionals. Use this tool to see if any subsidies may be available to you for health insurance coverage:

The advantage of owning a traditional IRAs is that they grow tax-deferred and are only taxed when you take a distribution. Typically, if you take a distribution prior to age 59.5 you will pay a 10% premature distribution penalty. You must also take Required Minimum Distributions (RMDs) when you reach age 70.5. The rules of inherited IRAs, however, are very specific and need to be understood by anyone planning to leave an IRA—or if you plan to inherit and IRA.

Earlier this year, the maximum bankruptcy exemption amount for IRAs increased from $1,171,650 to $1,245,475. This exemption amount is subject to cost-of-living adjustments (COLAs). Since most Americans don’t have IRA balances anywhere near $1 million, the IRAs of almost everyone will be fully protected from their creditors if they declare bankruptcy.