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The fastest way to get your hard-earned dollars back from Uncle Sam is not to give it to him in the first place. Making sure you have a properly completed W-4 on file with your employer is the best way to do this. Too many people, thinking they are manipulating their final tax bill, either claim too many deductions or too few. Claim too few and you have the situation of getting back money you have lent to government interest-free to use while you went without. If you and your spouse both work discuss how you will claim children in advance to assure you aren't both claiming Little Johnny If that happens, you will be left holding the tax bag, which Uncle Sam expects you to fill and deposit with him on April 15th or face huge penalties.

Assuming you have filled out the correct number of dependents for your exemptions, here are some things that can speed that refund along:

Preparation

Have a file set up to save necessary paperwork. Some of the things you will need are property tax receipts, medical expenses, receipts for car license fees, credit card statements-in short, anything you spend money on other than groceries and anything you receive money for other than your regular employment.

Spreadsheet those expenses!

I'm talking about the charges to your credit cards that are deductible, phone charges, cell charges, etc. Rather than hunting through all of those paper bills, you can likely download most of them right into a spreadsheet program. Then, it's easy to color-code them into expense categories and total them up. This can be done throughout the year so it's not such a big job all at once.

Select an on-line tax service

On the internet, go to IRS.gov and search free-file'. This will take you to a list of tax services which provide free filing for many taxpayers. Read carefully, as some services also provide free State income tax filing depending on your state. When you select a service, save their opening page to your favorites or bookmarks as most only provide free filing if entered thru the IRS.gov portal. You will need this to complete your filings.

I have used TurboTax On-line for years. One of their chief advantages is the ability to import both your filing information from previous years if you've used them before and to import personal banking information and household financial information if you use Quicken. Others are just as good, but I stick with the familiar. They also recommend and provide several different levels of tax expertise and types of filings.

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