It's Almost Tax Time!

Many people need to think about doing an undesirable chore several times before they actually undertake it. The process of filing income taxes takes this procrastination to an extreme: Many of us wait until the day before the filing deadline (or the day of!) before completing and mailing our taxes.

If this describes you, Fool, you can beat that habit this year! Complete your taxes this week, or this weekend. Yes, have them finished -- drumroll please -- a few days early! (You can accomplish this goal by filing by April 15, since this year's filing deadline is April 17. Next year, we'll work on being a few weeks early.)

If you're a Drip investor and you have a young, modest portfolio like our real-money Motley Fool Drip Port, you probably won't need to do much more than report your dividends on your Form 1040. Only if you received more than $400 in interest and dividends do you need to fill out a Schedule A as well. Indeed, if you're like the Drip Port and you haven't sold any stocks in the past year either, then dividends truly are the only additional tax concern that you should have this year in relation to your Drip Port. And dividends shouldn't be much of a concern at all. They're quite straightforward, and the Fool is here to help should you have questions.

Vince Hanks (TMF Elwood) wrote an excellent article on tax instruction and guidance for Drip investors, which is linked below beside some other very useful and understandable tax resources offered by the Fool. Please use these at your leisure to help answer all your tax questions. (Only the Fool tax book costs anything, and it could easily save you more than its $12 cost by lowering your taxes.) Also, as a last resort, you may get help from the knowledgeable folks who hang out on the Fool's Tax Strategies message board.

Useful Fool Tax Resources:

Drip Port, 3/9/00: Drips and Taxes

Rule Breaker, 3/28/00: Have a Taxilicious Year

The Motley Fool Investment Tax Guide 2000

Fool.com In-depth Tax Area and Tax FAQ

We'll keep tonight brief in hopes of persuading you to start your taxes (if you haven't yet) right now!

To close, I want to remind you that we sent $124.46 to Johnson & Johnson (NYSE: JNJ) last Saturday, as we announced last Friday. Finally, yesterday Brian Graney and I visited the new data center, or server farm, that Intel (Nasdaq: INTC) just opened (yesterday!) in Virginia. I'll have a report detailing our Foolish visit to Intel's Online Services division on Friday.

Fool on!

-Jeff Fischer, TMF Jeff on the boards.