Tracking Tax Documents With Org Mode

As I’ve written many times, I use Org mode to organize a ridiculous percentage of my life and can’t imagine living without it. It’s just so powerful that I keep finding new uses for it. The problem is, though, it’s so big and powerful that it’s hard for a n00b to get started. Experienced Org users always give the same advice: don’t try to learn it all at once; learn and use some small part of it first and then move on to another aspect of Org. Rinse and repeat.

Eric MacAdie has a slightly more refined version of that advice. As he says, “Learn X to accomplish $SOME-IMPORTANT-TASK” is much easier than just “Learn X”. This being tax season here in the U.S., he suggests learning how to use Org lists to track the receipt of tax forms.

That’s exactly how I learned Org. I started by making a check list of the W2s and 1099s that I expected to get and checked them off as they came in. When the list was complete, I could move on to the next stage of preparing my return. But that was just the first step. Later, I started tracking my tax info all year long. I had an Org table for each class of expense and added each tax deductible item to it as I went along. Each row of the table also had a link to the receipt for the item so they’re easily accessed in case of an audit. Of course, being Org tables, I also had a running total automatically. In one case, only a portion of an expense was deductible and Org could take care of that calculation automatically as well.

Finally, I had a summary table that gathered the totals from each of the tables. That table is completely populated automatically by Org as well. At the end of the year, I simply export the required tables to PDF and send them and the W2/1099 documents to my accountant. It’s still not pleasant—tax time never is—but it’s a lot easier than it used to be.

If you’re looking for a task to apply Org to and you live in a jurisdiction like the U.S. with a completely irrational and dysfunctional filing system, tracking your tax data is a good place to start.

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