It's National Tax Advice Day. Jane couldn't let it get by without noting that taxes are scary things! Women, who are big into entrepreneurship, and home-based business, and partnering together to sell innovative products and services, need tax advice.

We don't have any usable advice here - except to say, Hire a professional! We do!

As a favor to all readers, Jane thought we should pass along this great information about H&R Block, and National Tax Advice Day. Disclosure: this information was sent to us in the hopes that we would write about it. How could we not? Are we supporting or otherwise promoting H&R Block? No. We leave the choice of your tax preparer up to you, dear reader. But, we think this information is relevant and valuable...and if it convinces you to run to an H&R Block office, so be it.

First: we challenge you to answer this question (taken from the H&R Block website): You Can Deduct the Cost of an MP3 Player: true or false. Jane has no clue what the answer is...you will have to discover it yourself, by taking the quiz.

According to a press release sent to me, "H&R Block TaxCut Online do-it-yourself tax products are backed by over 50 years of tax preparation expertise. No other tax services company today can make this claim. The TaxCut Online suite of products for Tax Year 2005 are tailored for every type of taxpayer, from those with the most simple to the most complex tax and financial situations."

We wonder if a visit to their e-learning page isn't in order?

More information we learned from the press release:

"Got kids? Nearly 50 million, or 38 percent of all tax returns, claim dependents and may be affected by changes in the way the tax law defines a child. The new definition applies when claiming the exemption for a dependent, using head of household filing status, and claiming the child tax credit, the child and dependent care credit, and the earned income tax credit. Anyone with a child may gain or lose important tax benefits due to the changes."

The tax preparing firm is also hosting a Double the Amount of your Tax Refund contest. Jane is skeptical of these kinds of things...but, we look askance at everything with numbers in it, so we cannot be the judge of a contest offering to double one's tax refund. We will say that we rather like the design of their site. The green is a nice, welcoming color (on our monitor) and the purple offsets it nicely. On the Advice and Life Stages page, we noticed they had a Spanish translation.

We think that's very female friendly.

Naturally, the advice of the day is to start planning your taxes early. Like now. Here's a nice check-list to get you going.

Jane wishes you all a happy Tax-time! We hope you get back enough $$ to go to Florida! For the WOMMA conference! See you there!