Customer Reviews

J.K. Lasser's 1001 Deductions and Tax Breaks 2006: The Complete Guide to Everything Deductible

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I was interested in the 2007 edition of this book (for tax year 2006) so I checked out the 2006 edition to see if it was any good. Glad I did that, because the stuff here is really just too basic. Like "business owner" opined, all the stuff is on IRS's website for free, and IRS does an admirable job keeping the topics organized just like this book. (Of course, reading a book still has numerous advantages over reading on a PC screen.) The book, to my dismay, lacks depth. I've done my own taxes for the last 16 or 17 years so nothing here is new for me. But even for a newbie, it's better to just use the IRS website which is more accurate and authoritative and up-to-date.

Besides, much of the information in this book is already in Lasser's Your Income Tax book, by the same author, a New York accountant called Weltman. Speaking of that book, if you are interested in saving on taxes, Jeff Schnepper's "Pay Zero Taxes" may be a better read.

In any case, you can find all the information here free online, or in the Help section of such low-cost tax prep software as TaxAct, TurboTax and TaxCut. TaxAct, in particular, gives you all that tax-related materials from Lasser, publisher of this small volume.

Book covers all of the basic deductions. The J.K Lasser's small business taxes book is much better. Everything in this book is available on the IRS website. In fact, much of this book seems to be just a rewrite of the standard IRS tax guides.

I found a significant error in this book. Medigap policies were listed as both a valid medical deduction and an invalid medical deduction.

Although I am not an accountant, the book is very informative, detailed and seems very complete. It has been a great asset to me as I prepare my 2005 taxes.

It's worth the money you spent to buy it. That's all I have to say.

. . . it still takes too much time to do my own taxes. Who wants to spend all that time reading Greek? Tax laws just change way too much! Besides, I was an Education major not Business. I found an alternative option online called ProFaxTax after spending a lot ot time doing Google searches. I'll probably still keep buying the book for reference purposes and to ask intelligent questions of the people at ProFaxTax, but I won't be doing my taxes myself anymore.