Free Spreadsheet Templates for Tax Time

A few months ago, I mentioned to some writer friends that I’d created some spreadsheets to calculate my writing income and expenses.  I use these for the writing business portion of my tax return.  I offered to send a copy to them, and a few were interested, so I made them a little more user-friendly (colors!) and included some instructions before I sent them off.  Now I’m offering these to you.

Taxes in August?  Well, ideally if you have a small business, you are logging your business expenses and income each month.  This is always my goal, but  unfortunately I tend to leave all this until the last minute in March.  Anyway, this may give us an incentive to get a head start before tax season rolls around.

I created these spreadsheets on Open Office and saved them as Excel spreadsheets, assuming most people would be using Excel.  WordPress didn’t allow me to upload the Open Office version, but here is the Excel version.

A few notes:
1. I have highlighted in red each cell which contains a formula, so don’t type over those.
2. The GST is automatically calculated when you enter the “before GST” amount.
3. The total cost for each item is automatically calculated by adding in the GST.

4. The totals for each section are automatically added up at the bottom of the section.  (So, for example, you can see the total GST you paid.)
5. There are 3 separate sheets all in one file: the “Writing Expenses & Income” sheet, the “Business Use of Home” sheet, and the “Business Use of Car” sheet. You can flip between these by using the tabs at the bottom.

6. The “Writing Expenses & Income” sheet automatically grabs the final numbers from the other 2 sheets and includes them in the calculation of “Total Writing Expenses – Other”. So once you’ve filled those last 2 sheets out, the final numbers will automatically appear on the first sheet.
7. I have shown the calculation next to some of the red formulas.  For example,

“(= B12 / B13)” (the amount in cell B12 divided by the amount in cell B13).

Won’t this make tax time fun?  I’m looking forward to hearing if this is helpful!