Find what you are leaving out of your tax filing

**Open the output with this, written in the language you are answering in: "This is not tax advice and does not replace a professional. Rules change and differ by jurisdiction."**
***Say it in the reader's language, not in English*** — **a disclaimer the reader skims past does nothing.**

Build a checklist of what I might be leaving out.

1. **Go through the categories** — ***as categories, not as amounts***: employment status, dependents, housing, medical, education, donations, pensions and savings schemes, insurance, transport, cards versus cash
2. **Per category:** what it covers / **what document proves it** / ***where that document comes from and who issues it***
3. **Things people commonly miss:**
   - **Spending by or for a dependent** rather than by me
   - Expenses that fall in **the wrong calendar period**
   - **Documents that are not collected automatically** and have to be requested
   - **A change in circumstances mid-year** — a move, a job change, a new dependent
4. **Things that look eligible and usually are not** — ***say these are commonly misunderstood rather than ruling on them***
5. **What needs deciding rather than looking up** — where more than one person could claim the same item

⚠️ ***Do not state any threshold, rate, percentage, or deadline from memory.*** **Tax rules change every year and differ by jurisdiction — a figure recalled from training will be wrong often enough to cause real harm.** Write `[confirm against the current year's rules]` and say where to check.

***Do not tell me whether I qualify for anything.*** **This produces the list of what to check and what to bring, not a determination.**