When it comes to tax season, I hit the Internet big time, looking for sites that can help me squeeze every dollar of tax savings out of my house and mortgage. While not a substitute for CPAs, enrolled agents, or tax attorneys, here are a few helpful sites that I highly recommend as you prepare for April 16th.

Daily Digital: Operated by the Internal Revenue Service, this site has been a favorite of mine for about a year now and they've just revamped the site with some handy new features.

Once you arrive to the above URL, scroll down and click "Tax Info For You." Here you'll find tax planning tools, including Tax Trails (an interactive area where the user can answer yes and no questions for insights into deductions, limits, credits and more); tax tables for the year 2000; a tax calendar to help pinpoint individual, business and excise dates for 2001; a W-4 calculator to help you figure your Federal income tax withholding; information on the Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997 and more.

Tax Trails really caught my attention. If you've had questions about how your housing expenses are effected by taxes, now you can get some answers directly from the IRS. The Tax Trails section has several questions to click through on home-related deductions and tax issues, including:

• Is my home mortgage interest deductible?
• Are my home mortgage points deductible?
• Can you deduct business use of the home expenses?
• What taxes can result from the sale of residence?
• What about capital gains and losses?
• What is the "basis" of my real property?

By clicking the question or section, the site then presents the user with "yes/no" questions. For instance, on "Is my home interest fully deductible?" the question was:

"Were your total mortgage balances $100,000 or less ($50,000 or less if married filing separately)?"

If you clicked "Yes," then, yes, your interest is fully deductible.

The answer comes complete with links to the IRS publications that deal with mortgage interest deductions and the forms that should be filled out to report the information to the IRS -- all linked in PDF files. (You must have Adobe Acrobat Reader to read the files. The Acrobat Reader is free software.

The site also provides toll-free numbers to call if you would rather have the form mailed to you. In addition to the above services, the other sections include Tax Stats, Tax Info For Business, Electronic Services, Taxpayer Help & Ed, Tax Regs In English, IRS Newsstand, Forms & Pubs, and What's Hot on the site.

HomeAdvisor.com

There are good tips to be found on MicroSoft's home information website. You always want to know your tax consequences when you buy or sell a home and you always want to talk with a tax professional before making bit-ticket item decisions. But HomeAdvisor has put together a good resource guide here with helpful links regarding capital gains taxes, long-term savings, capital improvements, and other related information.

Homestore.com

Type in "taxes" in this site's "Find" box for a list of articles about taxes and your home, whether you're buying, selling, investing or renting. The tax area is populated with plenty of tips such as moving and taxes, lowering your tax bill with smart remodeling, and what renters can deduct even though they don't own a home.

H&R Block

H&R Block has a clean and easy-to-navigate site. By typing in real estate in the "Find" section at the top of the homepage, the user is presented with 37 pages of answers to questions regarding real estate and taxes, such as the use of your home in your business, deductions for depreciation and other expenses and deducting points from your income, among others.

American Association of Small Property Owners

A real surprise for many people is the alternative minimum tax -- don't be caught by this one. AASPO offers a good explanation of how the tax works, who it impacts, and related links.

M. Anthony Carr is a Washington-based author who has written about real estate issues for more than a decade.

Published: April 13, 2001

Use of this article without permission is a violation of federal copyright laws.

Mr. Carr has covered real estate since 1989. He is the author of Real Estate Investing Made Simple. Got a personal real estate issue? Post your questions and comments at Anthony’s blog: commonsenserealestate.blogspot.com.