― The First Step: Organizing Data to Eliminate Tax Season Stress ―
The first step in streamlining your tax filing is, above all, “organizing your data.” Before you even touch specialized software or e-Tax, organizing your monthly income and expenses in Excel will significantly reduce confusion and entry errors during submission.
This page introduces an Excel template structure that can be used directly for tax filing, along with tips to dramatically increase your work efficiency.
Recommended Template Structure
1. Income Sheet (Sales and Side Income)
- Monthly Sales Management: Track payment dates, amounts, and clients.
- Notes Column: Include project details or classification tags.
- Tip: If you have multiple income sources, adding a “Tag” column makes management much smoother.
2. Expense Sheet (Transport, Communication, Equipment, etc.)
- Core Data: Date, Amount, and Payment Method.
- Expense Item: Use a dropdown list for consistency.
- Remarks: Include keywords easy for AI to categorize (e.g., “Communication – Wi-Fi”).
- Tip: For those with many receipts, creating an “Image Link” column makes later verification easier.
3. Deductions Sheet (Insurance, Medical, Donations, etc.)
- Categories: Medical expenses, Life/Earthquake insurance, “Furusato Nozei” (donations), and Social insurance premiums.
- Tip: By summarizing the figures from your deduction certificates here, data entry into the official tax portal is finished in an instant.
4. Summary Sheet (Annual Income, Profit, and Tax Estimates)
- Automatic totals for annual sales and expenses.
- Calculation of net income.
- Summary aligned with the specific fields of the Blue Return (Ao-iro Shinkoku) financial statements.
- Estimated tax liability display.
Strategies for Maximum Efficiency
- Use Dropdown Lists for Expense Items: This prevents entry errors and inconsistent classifications.
- Automate Calculations with Formulas: Use
SUMIFSto instantly generate monthly totals by expense item. - Use “AI-Friendly Keywords” in Remarks: Keywords like “Meeting – Cafe” or “Equipment – Keyboard” significantly improve accuracy when using AI for later classification.
- Link Monthly Sheets to the Summary Sheet: Ensure your annual profit/loss is updated in real-time.
Advancing to Automation with AI
An Excel template becomes even more powerful when combined with AI tools. AI can automatically handle the following:
- Automatic Classification: Determining the expense item based on the remarks column.
- Extraction: Identifying expenditures eligible for deductions.
- Business/Personal Allocation: Automatically calculating “Kaji-Anbun” (proportion of expenses used for business).
- Data Formatting: Converting data into CSV or JSON formats optimized for tax filing portals.
Tasks that used to take hours manually can be completed in minutes with AI.
Make Your Tax Filing Smarter with Excel × AI
The AI Ledger & Tax Filing Tool reads your Excel data and handles everything from automatic classification and aggregation to data conversion for your tax return.
- Use your existing Excel ledger as is.
- Categorize massive amounts of receipts in an instant.
- Automatically detect data errors or missing deductions.
- Output data in a format that can be uploaded directly to official tax return portals.
Transform the tedious preparation for tax filing into a surprisingly smooth process.