Finance: Tax Tips to Save You Time and Money

Tax Tips to Save You Time and Money

Written by Larry Denton

It's nearly that time again. April 15--the income tax deadline--is rapidly approaching. There aren't many taxpayers in this world who can honestly say that they have not needed help completing their tax forms. Since paying taxes is an annual event, you would think that we would get better at repparttar

procedure from year to year, but this is certainly not repparttar 111935

case. We need help nearly every year because tax laws change dramatically, withholding tables are adjusted and our individual tax situation from deductions to dependents vary from year to year.

If you are like most people you haven't yet gathered all of your tax records, let alone filed your return. Before you get started, take some time to check on some deductions you might possibly qualify for, but are often overlooked. Points on home refinancing; health insurance premiums (including some long-term care premiums); non-cash charitable contributions (those summer clothes you gave to Goodwill); higher education expenses; work-related expenses (such as tools, labor union dues, and education costs to improve your skills); investment and tax preparation expense (deductions for safety deposit box rental and postage costs to send your return last year).

Once you have checked for deductions begin to gather and sort all of your tax related files, forms and documents. Income pay stubs, miscellaneous income records (Social Security, unemployment compensation, alimony), medical bills (remember there is a deduction for each mile driven for medical care), proof of contributions, investment records, and any other items dealing with your taxes. By using tax preparation software, you can probably finish your state and federal returns within a couple of hours. The software does repparttar 111936 math, helps you find deductions and figures out repparttar 111937 final amount due or a likely refund.

Facts you should know about loan types

Written by Prakash Menon

When you set out to borrow, you often come across terms like unsecured loans, revolving loans, adjustable rate loans, etc. While these terms are more or less self-explanatory, it is still useful to be clear on their exact meanings and what they imply before you finalize a loan contract.

Unsecured versus secured loans

As repparttar name implies, a secured loan is one where you offer collateral of some kind against repparttar 111934 loan. That means, if you default on repparttar 111935 loan, repparttar 111936 lender has repparttar 111937 right (but not repparttar 111938 obligation) to take possession of repparttar 111939 asset you have pledged.

In most cases, this asset would be what repparttar 111940 lender has financed. For example, when you take a home loan, you offer repparttar 111941 home as collateral.

There may also be cases where you may need to offer additional collateral over and above repparttar 111942 asset that is being financed. This happens, for example, when repparttar 111943 lender is financing close to 100% of an asset that is prone to rapid reduction in market value. In such cases, repparttar 111944 lender may insist on your putting up another asset so as to provide a reasonable margin of protection to repparttar 111945 lender in case of default.

Unsecured loans are those where such collateral arrangements do not exist. These loans are granted based on your credit standing, ability to repay and other factors.

All other factors being equal, a secured loan may be offered at a lower interest rate as compared to an unsecured loan. That’s obviously because of repparttar 111946 lower risk associated with repparttar 111947 secured loan -- should you default, repparttar 111948 lender has an asset to fall back on. Sometimes you end up with a choice -- you can take a loan on either a secured on an unsecured basis. The difference in APRs may be quite significant in such cases. However, being offered a choice like this is comparatively rare in consumer financing, but may exist in financing businesses.

Installment versus revolving loans

A revolving loan is one where you have access to a continuous source of credit, up to a pre-determined credit limit. If repparttar 111949 limit is say, $10,000, you can borrow any amount up to $10,000. And typically, you can repay all or part of repparttar 111950 amount you borrowed at a time of your choosing, within repparttar 111951 overall tenor of repparttar 111952 loan.

You pay interest only on repparttar 111953 amount you borrow for repparttar 111954 time you borrow it. Sometimes, banks may charge a commitment fee for making a revolving line of credit available to you. This fee is usually charged on repparttar 111955 average unutilized amount of your limit.

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