ee) EDMOND g& wa Life & Leisure Arledge Q&A Finances in the storms’ aftermath (Editor's Note: Below are questions and answers on financial matters addressed by professionals at Arledge & Associates.) By Mikayla Estes Arledge & Associates With all the severe weather we've seen this year, what should | do to proactively protect my per- sonal and business financial information? Before the storm hits, it’s a good idea to have all your impor- tant documents saved to an off- site storage facility. There are a few different ways to store infor- mation offsite. The two most common are safety deposit boxes and cloud-based storage. A safety deposit box is a great way to store original copies of im- portant financial. The benefits of a safety deposit box include low cost, storm resistant and bank security. They are also fire and waterproof. Cloud-based storage is an easy option that al lows you to access your information from any- where. The cloud enables you to store digital copies of important information on someone else's infrastructure, like at an off-site data center. Start by scanning important documentation onto your computer. To add an extra level of security you can create a zip file that is password protected. The zipped file can then be added to an online storage provider. Pricing ranges from $15 to $250 a year, but the most important consideration should be the security of the cloud storage provider you choose to protect your important documents. Who needs to know about back-ups? It is important for more than one person to know where the backup documents are kept. For personal information, you should let a few trusted people know where the information is kept and how to access it in the event you are unavailable. Businesses should have a written disaster policy that includes details of where the offsite informa- tion is stored and who is authorized to access it. A company should conduct annual meetings with employees to ensure everyone in the office is uni- formly informed. Annual meetings may sound a bit excessive, but relying on only a few managers to know the disaster policy can slow the response time in a sensitive situation. What if you lost your QuickBooks file? If your desktop version of QuickBooks is lost or destroyed and no offsite backup was maintained, consider contacting any out-of-office source that the QuickBooks file had been sent to. For exam- ple, a CPA firm. If a copy is available, you can then update it with online bank and credit card state- ments to recreate the QuickBooks file. If no ver- sion of the file can be accessed or restored, create a QuickBooks file with starting information pro- vided either from a prior year tax return, compila- tion or trial balance. In case you lost a copy of your most recent tax return you can request a copy from your CPA firm or login and download a copy from your online tax-filing provider. If neither op- tion is available, the IRS will provide a copy for a $50 fee. However, if you are in a federally declared disaster zone they will send you one for free. Can | deduct my losses on my tax return? Personal casualty losses are now only deductible if you are in a federally declared disaster zone. If you are in a federally declared disaster zone, per- sonal casualty losses of more than $100 are de- ductible, but limited to income thresholds. Business losses on the other hand are not as restricted as personal losses. You can deduct the property lost, but it must be the lessor of the property's adjusted tax basis immediately before the loss or the prop- erty's decline in fair market value. Estes