US INCOME TAX!

You can also directly check http://www.1098t.com/ if the school she goes to is registered with the site.

hmm that might be nifty thank you

does anyone know which form I gotta use if I made, say, $400 chump change besides my salary? 1040 not 1040A, right?

(yes, I report every dime, I can't do time)

if it's only $400, you can call it miscellaneous income on line 21. But yeah, that requires the 1040.

@self-employed folks: is there a good rule of thumb for calculating quarterly estimated taxes? my income will probably vary over the course of the year and will likely be quite different from last year, so i don't think just dividing what i payed in 2011 by four really makes sense.

Glad I re-read the rules on the 1099-G because I could have done myself out of a refund.

No help here, I'm afraid. I like the estimated quarterlies that my tax preparer has set up -- they usually leave me with a refund that covers my April payment and most of my June payment, so I don't have to worry about it until the fall, which is when I get my biggest paychecks of the year.

xxp - it depends on how much you net, and what other deductions you have. Self-employment tax used to 15.3%, but now I think it's down to 13.3% because of the payroll tax cuts. So, you have to figure that plus your regular income tax rate.

However, you want to pay at least as much as you owe at the end of this year, unless you know your income is going to be significantly lower.

Was helping a friend with turbotax and found out that it had apparently "upgraded" him to the home and business service for $99 (fed only), which he clearly did not need as a single, childless retail worker with no assets or outside income. What's worse, there is no way to downgrade once you "upgrade." Seems pretty fucked up.

Did it charge him $99 or was he upgraded for "free"?

no it charged him.

well, if it makes him feel any better he can deduct that next year

only if he itemizes deductions

fuck this shit

thankfully my day job cut into what i owed from freelancing, cuz o_O

^^ i was freelancing all year and i've wound up having to dip into what i'd set aside to keep myself afloat these last 3 months, now i'm filing an extension and still owe in the four figures

closer to 5 figures, even

and fucking turbotax trying to rip me off for my last hundred dollars til payday in a month, fuck you

Same boat as you HOOS. I owed 4 figures. Still unemployed. Had to borrow money from my moms to pay for it. Thankfully I lost my last shred of dignity about 4 months ago, so I didn't feel too bad. But that freelancing bullshit is for the birds.

oh yeah, also got stuck paying 80 on HR Block because of the "contractor" thing (should have been 40, but I had to pay again for Virginia, for which I owed and received nothing).

Hey you know that thing where some people will joke with you about well hey you're married now so you lost your freedom but at least you will save money on taxes? Well those people are filthy bastard liars.

heard it was teh gays that ruined marriage or something so its probably there fawlt

It's like having showtunes stolen from us all over again

you need some babies

RIP

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJOjTNuuEVw

HR Block sucks the big one!

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.