You’ve still got about six months before you really have to start worrying about your taxes, right? If you don’t want to reduce your tax bill, that’s true. But if you want to see if you can bring down your taxes a little, it’s worth thinking about in advance.

Tax-Free Days

Several states have a day or two where they don’t charge sales tax. These sales tax holidays are often timed to go with ‘Back to School’ sales. It’s worth looking into whether your state (or any state in easy driving distance) has a sales tax holiday before the end of the year.

It’s easy to forget that any sales tax you pay goes to the government, just like your income tax. It isn’t really part of the price of anything you buy. If you can at least cut back that amount by a bit, why wouldn’t you want to?

Your Home

There are a whole stack of tax deductions that go along with owning or buying a home. Your mortgage interest, along with any points fee you paid to your lender is tax deductible. If you have a home equity loan, you can deduct that as well.

I previously wrote about the tax credit available for first-time home buyers this year. I wouldn’t suggest buying a house just to take advantage of that credit, but it may help you take advantage of other tax breaks.

If you already own a home and you’ve been considering some renovations, you might want to get them done before the end of the year — especially if you’re looking at greening your home. You can write off the interest on a home improvement loan. If you make your home more energy efficient, install solar panels or otherwise go green, there are a wide variety of tax credits and rebates you can qualify for on both the state and federal levels.

Your Business

If you don’t already run your own business, it may be time to consider opening up shop. The list of business expenses you can write off for a home business is extensive: you can write off a percentage of your utility bills and mortgages, along with the full cost of just about anything you need to run your business.

It’s simple to set up a sole proprietorship and you don’t have to have a fancy operation to get the tax deductions. Selling stuff on eBay is enough to qualify you — and you might just make some money on top of reducing your taxes.

Do Some Research

Giving tax advice over the internet can be a bit problematic: because everyone’s tax situation is different, I wouldn’t recommend that you immediately set out on any of these plans. Instead, do a little checking and make sure that you understand what you have to do to qualify for any particular tax deduction or credit. The IRS’ website is a good place to start — all of the paperwork you might need is available online. If the rules and regulations seem a little complex though, it might be worthwhile to consult a tax professional.

It may sound morbid, but it’s true: if you’re working on getting your personal finances in order, it’s time to make a will. And every time your personal finances go through a major change, you need to update your will. If you buy a new house, if you have a child, if you pay off all your debt (and that does include mortgages and student loans) — your personal finances are the key constraint to what sort of documents you need to protect your estate.

I’ve heard people — especially young people — ask what a will has to do with personal finances. Odds are that you’re not entirely alone in life: you may be married, have parents, siblings, children, none of whom are going to know where to start tying up your affairs. Furthermore, depending on what you plan to do with your assets in the long run, personal finance and estate planning go hand in hand. If you plan to help out specific family members — usually children, but the laws allow for other relatives as well — you may want to consider setting up a trust or other vehicle to reduce taxes or other personal finance issues.

Having a conversation about estate planning can feel a bit strange — after all, most personal finance gurus tell you to focus on earning money so that you can enjoy life, not think about everything that can go wrong. But talking with your loved ones about how you want to handle your estate is a good first step. You may also want to talk to a financial planner or a lawyer — the laws involved are fairly complicated. Even if you feel competent in doing your own taxes, you may want professional help for estate planning.

There are some issues to consider when planning your estate, beyond how you choose to handle your assets. Decisions that are going to affect your finances, such as your health care and which family members should receive power of attorney if something happens to you, should also be considered. Think about a situation in which you were temporarily incapacitated: do you want a judge to pick one of your relatives to handle your finances, or do you want to pick that individual? If you care, you should take care of that issue sooner rather than later.

I know that the entire thought of planning in the extreme long-term seems morbid at best, but it’s worth taking care of in the near future. And there are ways to make long-term planning pay off in the short-term, if you’re willing to investigate your options.

Around tax time all kinds of fraud are reported, mostly people posing as the IRS on the phone and phishing for personal information to “confirm the information disclosed on your tax filing.” The new twist this season is using the Stimulus refund to gain access to your personal information.

Because this is not the usual refund most people expect, they are more susceptible to fraud surrounding it. Scammers will make calls to people, posing as the IRS and asking them to confirm their information so they can receive their Stimulus checks. Usually they are asked for their bank account information. When people hesitate, they are told that the only way they will receive their check is to disclose their account number. People might also be asked to disclose their social security numbers, addresses, driver’s license numbers, loan information, health insurance information, and more. These scammers will then take this information and open up credit cards, clean out bank accounts, or even file fraudulent tax returns in your name.

The same precautions that will save you from other tax scams will save you here as well. The IRS never sends unsolicited e-mails or phone calls, so treat any with caution. Call the IRS at 1-800-829-1040 to confirm any correspondence you receive. E-mails from the IRS might seem unusual, but now that more and more people are filing electronically, and having their refunds directly deposited into their bank accounts, e-mails asking for confirmation of your routing number and bank account are more believable.

These emails can be more dangerous than you think. They often look very official, with IRS seals and fine print on the bottom of the message, all in an attempt to lend credibility. These messages often have a link that you click to find out more information about “special rebates.” Clicking on these links at all, even out of idle curiosity, will download malicious software that allows hackers access to your computer and any personal info you have on it. So if it seems too good to be true, don’t click on the links “just to see.”

The cousin of the refund email scam is the audit email scam. This method uses scare tactics instead of the promise of money. The victim receives an email saying that they are being audited, and they must follow a link to a “secure” site to provide information. This of course instantly downloads the same software as before, and as a bonus any information you input into their website is now theirs to do with as they please.

Taxpayers have received more than 33,000 of these scam e-mails, reflecting more than 1,500 schemes. If you receive one of these emails, forward it to phishing@irs.gov to report it.