If you held a job during 2009 and received a funny looking piece of paper in the mail called a “W2″, you might just be able to get some money back from Uncle Sam. All you have to do is…file your taxes.
I know, it sounds scary. Taxes are something adults do right? Adults with fancy careers. Adults who make tens of thousands of dollars every year.
Nonsense.
Just because you’re a student or don’t make much money doesn’t mean you can’t get a tax refund.
According to this article from the Internal Revenue Service (they’re the people who take collect your money), if you made less than $57,000 during 2009 you can file your taxes for free. Even if you don’t have to file taxes because your income in low, it’s still not a bad idea because once you have a tax return, you can open a Roth IRA.
All you have to do is go this website. Once there, click either “I Will Choose a Free File Company” or “Choose Free File Fillable Forms” (try saying that 5 times fast!)
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If you select “Choose Free File Fillable Forms” then the IRS will allow you to select a tax form to fill out and you’re basically responsible for knowing what you’re doing. It’s not exactly hard, but I like having a computer double check my work, so I click “I Will Choose a Free File Company”. Once you’re on that page, you’ll be given a list of a dozen or so companies who can do your taxes.
I used TaxACT last year and this year and haven’t had any problems. I’m guessing H&R Block would be a good choice also. TurboTax also allows you to file your federal taxes for free. I noticed this year that the IRS says you can use TaxAct if “you are between 19 and 55 years old”. I don’t know why they say this because I’m definitely not 19 and I’ve never had a single problem.
For TaxACT, you go to their website, www.taxact.com, and sign up with your email address. It’s pretty obvious where to click:
Simply sign up for an account (it’s completely free) and start filing your taxes. The website guides you through everything you need to know. If there something you don’t understand, you can probably just ignore it. A lot of the questions apply to people with kids or individuals with complicated tax situations, so just click “next” without filling in any numbers or “skip”. Mainly, you just need to input numbers from the W2 sheet you received in the mail.
It’ll probably only take you about 30 minutes to complete the forms. Once you’re done, you can go ahead and submit your taxes to the IRS! If you fill in your bank account information for your refund, you’ll get money faster than if you elect to receive a paper check.
