US INCOME TAX!

Realizing I owed, um, more money than I expected a few years ago thanks to freelancing was a very rude awakening. I started to set aside a little bit from each check for this purpose. Still sucked.

I miss my flexible spending account from my last job. That was a nice little tax break. I still feel like I'm being cheated a little when I have to pay co-pays non-pre-tax. Your qualified medical expenses have to be really damn high before they count as an itemized deduction.

H2, your friend could dispute the charge through his/her credit card.

got this off in time and somehow finagled it so that what I owed to state was offset by what I'm getting back from federal. not entirely positive what I did with claiming a home office deduction was right, but nothing I could find really said otherwise (I had to be available 24/7 at my last job); it saved my ass, thankfully.

if you were freelancing schedule c is your best friend.

tvs become 'computer monitors', for example.

do you actually want to know whether you did it right? it sounds like you don't really want to know.

When I was a waiter at a sort of nice restaurant, a wine rep told us to save receipts for eating out and liquor purchases and deduct them as career education expenses. I did it and the person at H&R Block went along with it. Seems pretty questionable.

that is only deductible if you itemize/file Schedule A. It is a bit questionable - certainly not all restaurant meals and booze purchases would be legit.

When I went on a Roadfood tour with Jane & Michael Stern in 2010, he was in line next to me at the New Mexico State Fair and got a receipt for a piece of pie. I had a bit of a blinding OMG moment and said "everything you eat is a deductible expense, isn't it?" and he just looked at me and smiled real big.

there were a couple years when i made several hundred extra dollars doing music writing. it occurred to me at tax time that, if i'd had a receipt for every single thing i'd ever done for fun in that year i could have made out like a bandit. but alas.

I think the classic question is really not whether you "can" do all that kind of stuff, but whether you're setting yourself for eventual audit. The more you do, the more likely an audit.

I'm starting to feel like a broken record here, but it doesn't really work that way.

Even after my voluminous questionable deductions, I still wound up owing Illinois thousands of dollars every year I was a waiter in Chicago. In the 3 years I worked at restaurant, I never received a single paycheck above $0 b/c every cent of my $4/hr went to taxes. Imputed tips keep everyone honest and they make the tax bill bite you in the ass. Should have paid quarterly, but after 4/16, I re-entered my fantasy land.

jesus

a possibly elitist (on my part!) question: can any of y'all afford a good accountant?!?

Good accountants aren't necessarily that expensive. It depends on what you want him to do with your finances.

alfred OTM ... my accountant is def more expensive than TurboTax and probably H&R Block/Jackson Hewitt, and even though i have a LOL tax law degree i've still had him do my taxes these past four years.

but the accountant i use isn't break-the-bank expensive. it isn't as if i go to one of the Big4 to do my taxes.

Am I wrong to think that an accountant isn't going to do give me an advantage in doing my very simple taxes, which consist of wage income only and no reason to think I have unused itemized deductions?

I just use taxact every year. Takes me about 30 min and I'm done.

I use Taxslayer.com. It's easy and cheap and when it seems to do due diligence to ferret out deductions.

je55e: in that circumstance -- where all you have are W2s and maybe an odd 1099 from a bank or a mutual fund company -- then no, going to an accountant is probably a waste of money & you should just use TurboTax or TaxAct for yer returns.]

however, there were a number of people in this thread who indicated that they were freelancers/self-employed or had tip income. in that case, i think that such people should definitely consider finding a good accountant.

OK. Just wondering if I was missing out on some super secret loopholes or something.

The only good thing about my student loans being in repayment is that I can deduct payments on interest. Wish I could deduct payments on the principal.

Yeah I'll have that comfort for a long time to come.

Freelancers, don't forget your quarterly estimates today.

aaaaaaaaagggghhhhh, so THAT'S what happens when I don't have any business expenses. Jaysus!

Surely you have some - didn't you use your phone/computer? Paper? Internet connection?

Yeah, those usual items were there, but I didn't buy any business equipment or do any business related travel. My quarterly payments were a bit lower than usual and my income was up just a bit. It's not a monster-sized tax hit, but it was noticeable -- especially since I usually applied my refund to my quarterly estimated payments, which covered 1.5 of them. This April I have to pay a few hundred for 2012 AND make the first 2013 quarterly payment in full.

do you have an IRA?

No...I need one.

Never too late, they say.

you have until April 15th to start and contribute to a regular IRA, though you could always do a SEP-IRA, which has higher contribution limits, and if you file an extension you have until the extended date to contribute for tax year 2012.

I LOVE HOW THIS THREAD TITLE IS IN ALL CAPS AS THOUGH TO CALM AND SOOTH YOU THROUGH THIS DIFFICULT TIME

ha what a world!

i am literally filling in a form

i had to read a multipage table until i found my "tax", which i then copied to line 15

What kind of taxes do you have to pay

http://www.irs.gov/Individuals/International-Taxpayers/Taxation-of-Nonresident-Aliens

Looks like you're taxed the same way we are. Wow

Careless tax preparers who throw a typo into your return, overreporting your estimated payments and leaving you with an additional surprise tax bill — classic or dud?

you or someone you paid?

Someone I paid. I've been using this firm for 15 years and this is their first mistake, and the IRS isn't charging any interest or penalty, so I'm going to let it slide this time, but damn, irritating.

could be a lot worse

http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/publications/analysis-donald-trumps-tax-plan/full

I want to post about this but not clutter up the general mourning/analysis thread.

He wants to increase the standard deduction to $25k (for single people, didn't specify for head of household status whether it would be higher and somewhere between single and married filing joint as is traditionally the case). One of my recurring problems with the tax code is that the cost of living in the U.S. is so varied, and the standard deduction seems based on the cost of living in cheaper areas. Having to explain to someone making $25,000 in San Francisco or NYC that the government doesn't consider them low income because you can live fairly comfortably on that in Tennessee, is not something I enjoy as a tax person.

no kidding

I'm trying to find out how much, under the GOP plan, my taxes will actually be reduced, and the best I can come up with is like, $1k. and I'm pretty high upper middle class incomewise. who is going to see all these big cuts?

Everybody who makes over $415,051 per year who will immediately see their tax rate fall from 39.6% to 25%, for starters

Unless they are a sole proprietor, in which case it drops to 15%

http://www.forbes.com/sites/anthonynitti/2016/11/09/president-trump-what-does-it-mean-for-your-tax-bill/#7cc751c4b8b6

That's how you stick it to the elites, duh.

see the thing that was confusing about the trump tax plan is that it mentions "pass through businesses" - a sole proprietor is not a pass through business. Partnerships and S-Corps are pass through businesses. Does he actually mean pass through businesses or all businesses?

if trump doesn't know, then no one else knows. I'm pretty sure he has no clear idea what he's going to ask for, let alone what he'll get from Congress.

the Forbes piece has different information than the taxpolicycenter one. The bracket rates have changed.