Last Minute Money Saving Tax Tips for Procrastinators

No fooling – April 15th is just around the corner. It’s bad enough to have to pay taxes, but who wants to pay more than their fair share? Robbing Peter to pay Paul who will overpay the Piper? We don’t think so! Here are a few handy tips to save some green without scamming Sam.

1. Charity begins at home, and it can also save you money on your taxes if you keep very careful records of everything.

To get the most milk out of your human kindness, always remember to keep a pad and pen on hand so you can demand a written receipt from the hobo outside the Metro every time you give him money for his morning Mad Dog.  Charity can also extend overseas, so the same holds true for the little kid you adopted via late night TV in Burundi.  Make sure he/she sends you regular correspondence detailing how many grains of rice your monthly donation provides.  As the government won’t give you any incentive to pay for their English lessons, it’s okay if they just draw pictures, although sending you a diorama of how you have improved life in their village would be even cooler, as it can do double duty by looking great on your coffee table to provide a conversation piece to keep people from thinking you're a self-involved bastard/bitch.

2. The government has created certain “green” initiatives for taxpayers.  You can get green for going green by trying some ideas like:

• Shooting out your drafty windows with a 12-guage shotgun and committing insurance fraud by blaming a Tea Partier, and then installing energy efficient windows.
• Demanding a tax credit along with personal injury damages for extreme anxiety after purchasing a Toyota Prius.
• Claiming the sunroom off of your breakfast nook to be a "geothermal heating unit."

3.  Believe it or not, self-improvement tax credits are available if the improvements can net you more cash, and they don’t even have to fix your personality.  A couple of cases where these deductions can be utilized are:

• If the only way you can support your child is by getting breast implants and head to toe tattoos in an effort to wreck homes and sell your sexy stories to tabloids.
• Your career success as a professional wrestler is dependent upon using enough body oil to create such a glare coming off of your skin that officials will never notice the body acne from excessive steroid use and disqualify you from competing.

We hope these tips have put you more in the know to keep Uncle Sam from grabbing too much of your dough!