As we all know, taxes are not once-a-year activity. In order to keep tabs on all your tax documents, including receipts and bank statements, you have keep them organized on an ongoing basis throughout the year.

This doesn’t sound very fun, right? I’m sure some of you are wondering how this would even be possible. Won’t you have to get an administrative assistant to handle all this paper work?

The answer is no!

With Shoeboxed, you can head to HR Block or JacksonHewitt next March with the confidence that you have all your receipts organized. You will also be relieved that you will be able to breathe easy if you are ever audited by the IRS.

Well, that’s where Shoeboxed comes in. You’ll be able to outsource all that administrative work of organizing your receipts to Shoeboxed. We’ll scan your receipts and upload them to a secure account online. You will have them for all your tax needs. They are exportable to tax software, Quicken and Excel. You can also print them to have them in paper form.

HR Block and JacksonHewitt will probably thank you for saving them from all that administrative work that they now don’t have to do.

Even though it’s past tax time, I guess you can never really get away from the stress that the IRS and auditors can cause. I’ve talked with at least four business owners on the phone today that will be going through audits from the tax man or from other auditors soon. They need to get their receipts organized quickly and efficiently.

They were asking whether or not Shoeboxed would be a workable solution for them, and I just wanted to highlight a couple of reasons why Shoeboxed can be a great help when these frustrating audits come around. There’s nothing like Shoeboxed when it comes to getting your receipts for audits organized.

The first question that most people have is whether the IRS accepts digital receipts. The answer is simple: yes! The IRS accepts digital copies of receipts, which are stored in your Shoeboxed account. You can read more about their policy here: http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-irbs/irb97-13.pdf

These images are saved on secure servers that are backed up every 24 hours. This is a lot safer than storing those images on your own computer, which could be subject to breaking or succumbing to a virus. Store them safely and securely on Shoeboxed for life.

If you are unlucky enough to have to go through an audit, you’ll be happy you have Shoeboxed to help you through it. You will have all your receipts organized and easy to find, just a click away. You will have to spend less of your personal time making sure that the audit goes correctly because you’ll have the peace of mind to know that everything is in order.

It will be extremely easy to provide the IRS with whatever they need, and you’ll be on your way.

If you have any other questions you would like answered on the blog, let me know; I’m happy to answer any question you have. Leave it in the comments, or send us an email at help@team.shoeboxed.com.

I found a great article this morning about Tax Day, and I wanted to share it with you, if only because it has one of the most on-target quotes ever recorded about receipts in the mainstream media.

Anyway, Mark Sanders wrote this story in on TradingMarkets.com for today to talk about the trend of procrastinators in the tax filing process.

He interviewed Jacob Martin, who spent an entire two days organizing receipts to prepare his tax filings for this year. Here is Jacob, in his own words:

I don’t like it that the government forces me to have a hobby as a receipt collector. I don’t put off organizing deliberately. I hate to get started. It steals your time to organize your receipts. Even if you have only a few receipts, that’s still a few receipts too many receipts to keep track of.

Hey Jacob, we’ll be your receipt collector! If you find this post and want to try out Receipt Mail-In for free for a few months, give us a call (888-369-4269)! There’s no reason to waste time dealing with all the clutter. There is a better way!

Well, Tax Day has finally arrived. April 15, the day that always seems so far away, the one where we pull out all our procrastination tricks and try to avoid the pain that is giving our money away to the government and the frustration that is going through all that paperwork. Ah yes, a great day.

Of course, one of the most annoying things about taxes for today is organizing receipts. Since they are needed for donations and deductions, you’ve got to have a copy of them all. Unfortunately, many people lose them or store them in some primitive organizational system so they can never find them this time of year. I was talking with a Receipt Mail-In user the other day on the phone and she admitted that she has thousands of receipts crammed in one of her moving boxes from when she bought a new house. Imagine trying to find a receipt in there for your taxes. Actually, scratch that. Don’t think about that. Oh God… Oh… no.

Oh, sorry. Sometimes unorganized receipts really get to me. Anyway, there is obviously a really easy solution to getting your receipts organized. At Shoeboxed, you will never have to go through the pain of organizing all your receipts in a frenzy in the last few weeks of tax season. The best way to organize receipts, after all, is to stay on top of the clutter as it comes in.

Scanning every receipt you have is a powerful way to stay organized and save money. Having receipts scanned on your computer allows you to access them anytime and easily use them for taxes and other important record-keeping activities. And if scanning isn’t really your “thing”, then send them on over to us. We’ll scan your receipts for you with our Receipt Mail-In program.

I hope you’ve been a Shoeboxed user for a while, because today will be stress-free, but if you’re just finding out about us, we wish you the best of luck on this worst of national holidays.

Not sure how to file your 1040? Well, you’re in luck. This Saturday, March 29, 2008, is Super Saturday, the name for the IRS’s new one-day outreach program. On this date, the IRS is willing to help and reward you in exchange for your 1040s.

The reason behind this unexpected generosity on the part of our government’s tax collectors is that those who benefit from Veteran Affairs, Social Security, and Railroad Retirement are finding that they must fill out 1040s on such sources of income, for the first time. If you are receiving $3,000 from any of these sources, you should head to the IRS website and find where they will be holding a clinic near you. The IRS has stationed 320 officers throughout the country. There will be help stations in every state and the District of Columbia. Since turnout is expected to be in the millions, mark it on your calendar now and plan an early morning visit to your generous new friend, the IRS.

If you are eligible, you can look forward to up to $300 reward - or up to $600 if you’re married - in what is being referred to as an “economic stimulus payment” by IRS commissioner Doug Shulman. Although I’m not sure what an “economic stimulus payment” does, I know that I wish I were eligible to receive one.

I just wanted to share with you a review of Shoeboxed in The Herald Sun, the newspaper of record here in Durham, NC.

Just in time for the tax season, Shoeboxed.com, a “Netflix for receipts” Web site by a Durham start-up, is now compatible with Quicken and TurboTax. Shoeboxed helps customers organize receipts, and compatibility with the two leading desktop programs in money management and tax preparation was a natural move for the business.

Monica Chen, Herald Sun

Thanks for the great review, Monica!