Tax Professional Granada Hills Reviews Disaster Planning

With all the weather related disasters happening around the country and the world many clients have been asking me how to protect their important documents in the extreme case of a natural disaster. I believe this is a great question not just for forces of nature, but anything that might come between you and your documents. What if your house burns down? What if someone robs your house and along with it your safe full of important documents? Or what if your 4-year old starts a connection between your documents and your shredder?

How can you protect your important documents if something happens to them?

The IRS has some helpful hints and I believe everyone should consider adopting one or all of their suggestions. Give me a call and I can help in this process!

1.     Create electronic backups of your important documents!

Truly one of the greatest things about this day and age is our technology. Scanners, email, external hard drives and online backup software can help us keep the information we need safe, create “greener” copies of things we need to reference over time and just gives us peace of mind. Obviously the most important thing to remember when creating a backup (or backups!) or important documents is to keep the sets separate from one another. Consider keeping one at your home and one at your office or at the home of a close family member.

Documents that are important to keep backup copies include: bank statements, tax returns, insurance policies, wills, etc. Many of your financial providers like banks and your lawyer (for wills, documents, etc) keep their own copies of things, often electronically. But don’t count on others to do it for you. Either check to make sure the most recent copy exists through your accounts with them, or make a copy of it for yourself anyway! You can scan documents and save them to different computers, create paper copies and store in different places or burn documents to CD’s and store in a safe place. I suggest investing in a safety deposit box and a fireproof safe for your home as an alternative place to store documents. A fireproof safe and home is convenient for documents you may want to access regularly and a safety deposit box is great for things like insurance policies, wills and power of attorney designations.

2.     Document your valuables.

In the event that your valuables are lost or stolen, you can help yourself after the fact by documenting the things of value you own. The IRS suggests having photographs and lists, room by room, of your belongings. Check out the IRS’s disaster loss workbook to learn more. (link: http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p584.pdf) Again – this list including photographs should have backup copies as well.

3.     IRS Copies

In the event that you lost many of your important tax related documents remember the IRS has copies of previously filed tax returns, including any and all documents attached to each return (like your W-2, etc).  Learn more about preparing for unforeseen disasters on IRS’s website (link: http://www.irs.gov/newsroom/article/0,,id=239917,00.html).

I can help you set up a plan that suits you best to prepare yourself for a situation in which you’d lose some or all of these documents. Making sure you have copies of everything is important but it’s also an overwhelming task that I’m prepared and qualified to help you with. 

Give me a call today – 818 368 5374 or send me an email by clicking Granada Hills Tax Professional