Money

Now that you have an idea of the deductions you qualify for, you can manage each tax deduction line item and review the transactions Money imports to calculate your deductions. This way you can ensure that every potential tax-deductible expense is included in the calculations Money performs.

Money includes a set of helpful steps to assist you to start reducing your taxes any time of the year. If you did not designate taxes as a priority in the Setup Assistant, you should do so now in order to gain access to the Taxes Priorities option in the Taxes menu.

Now that you have set up Money to record, monitor, and help reduce your taxes, it is time to generate an estimate of your taxes for the year.

Now that you have run the Tax Estimator, you may want to display the results on the home page, as shown in Figure 10-5. Although you can always view it on the Tax view (by selecting Tax from the Choose a view menu), you can easily add it to any home page view:

When it is time to sell your investments, Money helps you determine the tax implications by listing your net gain, proceeds, and tax liabilities, all on one screen. Best of all, you can alter each investment’s sale price and quantity to perform "what if" scenarios that can reveal more lucrative ways of earning profits on your funds.

Money offers many different ways to help you prepare your taxes. The method you choose depends on the level of service and assistance you need.

You can easily create additional tax reports to display tax-related transactions, capital gains, and loan interest. These reports can be printed to be filed with your tax papers or used for financial planning.

While managing your portfolio could easily become your full time job if you are an active investor, Money includes some fantastic investment tools for everyone from the beginning investor to the active day trader. You can use Money to track, manage, and closely monitor your investments. Plus, regardless of whether you invest with one brokerage firm, or many, Microsoft Money puts all of your investments in one place for easy reference: the Your portfolio screen.

Naturally, you may want to customize the layout of the portfolio to better suit your personal tastes. First, you should select a general layout from the View menu. There are eleven different views to select from, to help you instantly gain different perspectives on your investments....

As you look at your portfolio, you might notice investment accounts missing because you forgot to enter them in the Setup Assistant. As a rule of thumb, you should set up one account for each brokerage statement you receive.