Personal Finance : Filing for Taxes year 2008

This is the second episode of the personal finance series which is devoted to educate you continuously for the futures to come. Today the main focus of this post is laid on taxes as we are getting closer to the tax filing period. You should be receiving your W-2 forms to your mail box if not they can be accessed online by your green employee.
Filing for taxes as an individual or as a family as soon as you received the W-2 forms, will allow you to receive your withheld funds returned to you sooner. Most individuals are used to filing taxes by old fashioned paper based method. The fact is that paper based filing of taxes takes longer to reach the IRS and the same with your state. Wouldn’t you want to see your money which was first derived from your paycheck and withheld by the IRS, be sent to you as soon as possible and perhaps you could use that money is this tough economic times? The trick is to file for taxes as soon as you can.
Filing for taxes online is another way you could speed up the refund process. Most of the time your state might have their own website set up for state and county tax filing. That is something worth looking into if you are in desperate need for that tax money. IRS on the other hand, do not have an online base filing system directly in association with them, although there are other private companies out there doing this function. More information about this can be found at http://www.irs.gov/efile/index.html. Given the fact that these separate private organizations striving to provide an online Federal tax filing services, I myself try to stay out it and use the old fashioned paper and mailing which still seem to refund my money faster.
Another faster way to get your returns is having the money deposited directly to your bank checking account. Intuitively sending a check in mail is time consuming in comparison to a direct deposit, and that should make sense to you.
Some of the forms that you might need for your tax filing purposes can be found as pdf format at http://www.irs.gov/formspubs/lists/0,,id=97817,00.html and your public library should have copies of required tax documents. I hope this episode of the personal finance entrenched you to be more knowledgeable about your own finances.