So I took some time today and finished the first of my mini website projects: Education Tax Credits.

I came up with the idea while reading through the IRS documentation about the Hope Credit, Lifetime Learning Credit, and Tuition and Fees Deduction.

I just started graduate school, and next year I’ll be taking advantage of one of these tax benefits. While reading the IRS page, I thought it’d be nice if there was a simplified version that explained the important details without getting hung up on all the legalese.

I don’t know if I accomplished that, but I learned a lot about the tax credits while working on it!

In addition to summarizing the IRS documentation, I created a simple calculator to estimate how much each tax credit/deduction would net you on your tax return. It works nice, and I like the styling of it. If I get around to it, though, I want to make it work via AJAX (currently it posts to a php file and then redirects back to the page).

I also plan on posting a series of quick “Question of the Days” about the tax credits and deductions.

I don’t plan on spending a lot of time on the site – maybe an hour or two each week adding QotDs, and a few hours promoting/linking throughout the web – and I’m curious to see how well it’ll do in SERPs and, more importantly, PR. Cause, you know, PR can equal cash.