Taxes!

Filed in February because I needed my EITC right away. Got $550 back (about a third of what I got last year) and treated it as a fifth paycheck, like I always do.

milo z wrote:

I owe $6 + $10 for my Obamacare plan - that takes TurboTax from free to file to $60 because I owe the $10, so I've got to look at the free filing options this weekend.

I swear I'm not a shill, but I've been using FreeTaxUSA for years with no problem. Federal returns are completely free; they make their money from state income tax returns and optional services. Since my state doesn't have a state income tax, I've never had to pay them a cent to file my returns.

Met this old guy, a friend's father in law, who was complaining about taxes, saying if you live in DC in a $3 million home with two kids in private school that Biden's proposed new capital gains structure imposes an unduly harsh burden. I (in so many words) told him he was full of shit. He apparently literally has a portrait of his Porsche hanging in his house.

So what else did Hugh Hewitt say.

I also realized that I think I can claim some bigger refunds from the last few years because of another dumb mistake I've been making — a good argument that maybe I should actually pay someone to do our taxes rather than muddling through on TurboTax.

After 16 years of Turbotax, I switched to an accountant -- a friend's dad, so he gives me a discount -- and, voila, I'm back to getting returns.

Oh wise soul. (I am a very simple person but getting my yearly return back with all the breakdowns and details is weirdly satisfying if only because so much of it seems based around things I would have never known to look for.)

Douglas Wolk did say as much re getting an accountant way back at the start of the thread, admittedly! Got through the 2000s okay but realized around 2009 I had made a silly mistake and going with an accountant recommended by a friend was the solution, still with said accountant. I remember talking to my dad about it then and he admitted that fairly recently (at the time) he'd done something similar where he realized a good accountant was the best way forward! Live and learn.

I email him three statements at most -- I'm fairly straightforward. But there are deductions and loopholes even TurboTax misses, apparently.

Mine provides a worksheet for a slew of details and expenses I complete and send back, on top of the statements themselves. It means a little work on my part but I've got it down to a science.

as a tax professional, I will say that some people really benefit from having professional help with their taxes, but others are just fine doing it themselves ... as in, there is only so much a professional could do for you that wouldn't be ... fraud ... and the new IRS budget is supposed to increase funding for free file software and technology, which I think is a good thing. A lot of people have pretty simple taxes.

Also we can now electronically file amended returns, so it isn't as much of a pain to correct mistakes as it used to be.

And I'm all for that!

+1 for Free Tax USA, been using for past 3 years - the scammiest sounding tax software possible but that actually is the least scammy out of the free-ish options.

i also used freetax usa for the first few years i was here. seemed fine!

all way too complicated for me now. i could probably do it, but 1) it would take a lot of time, and i'm happy to pay someone else to get that time back 2) i would always worry i screwed up. my previous accountant doubled his prices this year though, so i had a panicky week trying to find someone new. new guy is called joe. he lives on long island and will not work with you without a referral. i love him.

he hates me because i'm english. i think he's irish italian.

there are many reasons why accountants dislike their clients ... I'm on a FB group where we discuss this.

ha! what are the common ones?

outside of the standard dislikeable traits of: not paying the bill, complaining about services being expensive, wanting things done at the last minute:

here are a few common complaints that accountants have about tax clients they dislike:

1. the client that thinks they know as much as the accountant about taxes but often doesn't know what they are talking about
2. the client that continually never has their shit together and always has to be reminded/informed of the same exact things every single year
3. the client that does the thing that the accountant tells them not to do and/or doesn't do the thing the accountant tells them to do (e.g. make estimated payments, pay salary out of an S-Corp) and then blames the accountant for the resulting problems
4. the client that needlessly over-complicates things (as in there is no financial advantage to having the complex business type or series of transactions)
4a. a variant of the needlessly over-complicator -- in the old days this was "the client with the unsorted box of receipts" -- now it's pdfs and folders of receipts for things they can't deduct or income that isn't taxable

oh and #5 -- the bad liar -- any licensed tax preparer has to follow certain ethical guidelines, it's a bit like lawyers (though lawyers have more professional protections) ...

in tax prep, the ethical dance re fraud generally is based on the legal premise that the preparer can take a client's word for things as long as they don't have reason to believe the client is full of shit. Skilled tax people (like lawyers) have ways of phrasing questions or requests for documentation to reduce the likelihood that a client will reveal that they are full of shit. The worst is the one who will volunteer they are full of shit and insist that the preparer go along with the fraud/cheating, sometimes not realizing that they are asking the preparer to do something that could lose them their license.

re: 2, i have my shit together, but i definitely asked the previous accountant the same questions every year. to be fair that was because i wasn't allowed to email them. all communication had to go through a stupid https portal thing and previous year's conversations were impossible to search.

i am becoming a landlord/class traitor this year so looking forward to doing lots of 4a.

all communication had to go through a stupid https portal thing and previous year's conversations were impossible to search.

i hate those things -- a lot of accountants use them now. I am sure a lot of it is because they don't want to deal with coming up with their own computer systems because there was such a standardized way of how things were done in the paper + in-person appointments era ... also most accountants are kinda lazy tbh

So now the Feds are extending deadlines for some storm-ravaged states - what I can't tell is if it's only for people who live in the named counties, or if the new deadline is statewide?

https://www.ktvu.com/news/irs-extends-tax-deadlines-storm-victims-7-states-2023

My tax accountant uses a portal too, I uploaded a lot of stuff but insisted on meeting him personally. I consolidated accounts from three different firms into one this year, it was not all that much money in the long run but I was sweeping over funds including proprietary holdings that had to be liquidated and sold before transfer and including a donor-advised charity fund. I also contributed for the first time to a Roth IRA using the non-taxable portion of my 401k and transferring some taxable money from my IRA.

There were a lot of documents to upload and finances and financial strategy to think about, and I'm grateful that someone else was strategizing about it and explaining it to me

I'm going to do another Roth conversion this year but don't expect my taxes will be very complicated

xp - that deadline was extended back in January (to May) and then extended until October back in early March -- for California, it's almost statewide in that only a few counties are excluded, but the most populous ones are all extended

thanks sarahell - that KTVU article didn't include Alameda (their home base!) and I freaked for a minute but it seems that Alameda IS included

Salute to anyone getting it in under the wire, wherever you are.

on my way to the midnight post office

Direct File is a new tax tool to file your federal taxes directly with the IRS.

currently available in 12 states

https://directfile.irs.gov

I was just collecting and organizing all the information we'll need to do our taxes. It's all ready to go (!) except one or two forms that haven't arrived yet in the mail.

Literally in the same boat here -- one 1099 and the health insurance form. Otherwise just dying to send this all off and be done with it.

Actually correct that, the health form just landed per a check just now. So basically a remaining 1099 theoretically although I'm slightly suspicious about it showing up by tomorrow. (I have the total separately -- not a large amount -- and will roll it in as needed.)

Roffle. And said 1099 JUST landed in my inbox. Timing!

And how are we all doing. (About to send my final paperwork/payment off to my accountants tomorrow and then I just wait...)

Done & filed. State tax refund showed up hours ago. Federal refund due.

Uuuuggghhhhh

Time change, smoke detector battery checks, and tax time

Saw my state and federal refunds pending in my account yesterday.

I always have to pay more, so I procrastinate.

i’m lucky to be able to afford someone to do this for me, as every year i get about $3k back. if it was me doing it i’d either 1) not do it 2) mess it up or 3) spend so long on it that i may as well have paid someone to do it in the first place

133 pages this year. Great system.

Filed in mid-February, got my NJ refund yesterday, which is me cutting my last tie to that state. I are an Montanan now.

Been in the US since last spring, went to see a tax advisor yesterday as we have a slightly confusing set-up with one partner working full-time and income also coming in from a couple of different UK sources. Left the meeting vastly more confused than when I went in, which seems par for the course with accountants going by past experience. Bloody hell I thought dealing with the Inland Revenue was bad!

compared to the inland revenue it is ... unbelievably bad.

Oh jeez Matt#2. This is your first go around then? It is profoundly unpleasant (and expensive).

Been in the US since last spring, went to see a tax advisor yesterday as we have a slightly confusing set-up with one partner working full-time and income also coming in from a couple of different UK sources. Left the meeting vastly more confused than when I went in, which seems par for the course with accountants going by past experience. Bloody hell I thought dealing with the Inland Revenue was bad!

Oh jeez Matt#2. This is your first go around then? It is profoundly unpleasant (and expensive).

American taxes are so dumb. Last year I made a mental error and ended up owing a couple thousand, so I predictably overcorrected for that this year PLUS I didn't account for a couple of changes in our favor — standard deduction went up, IRA contribution limits went up, plus most significantly also our health insurance went from us paying for it ourselves through the marketplace to my wife getting it through work, which means it now comes out pre-tax.

All of which means that even though we on paper made more money this year than last year, our taxable income went down while I boosted my estimated tax payments — so now after owing money last year it looks like we're going to get the biggest refund of our lives this year. Which MAYBE I could've anticipated if I spent more time thinking about all of this or thought about it more than once a year, but anyway it's a dumb system.

And now I'm afraid the big jump in refund will somehow get us audited, but whatever, I think I could survive that.

Every single state and national politician in the USA loves to tinker with the tax code. The result is a mind-boggling complexity that never repeats itself from year to year. The forms keep shape-shifting, the instructions are baroque, credits come and go with bewildering rapidity.

I've kept our financial life as boring and vanilla as it possibly could be and I keep comprehensive records. But I finally gave up doing our taxes because I never knew for sure that the some new wrinkle had been inserted deep into the instructions, so I had to relearn the procedures every year. The tax software helps, but now I just hand it over to a preparer and wash my hands of the whole mess.

I plugged along on my own for some years but I remember Elvis Telecom telling me in the start of the 2000s I should really go for a tax guy. After I realized a couple of long-standing errors in approach that I'd been doing for some time a few years later, I took said advice and frankly I'm all the better for it. My situation is certainly less complex than some but it's not easy plug and play either, and frankly I'll always be reassured knowing someone else's name is on the return as well as mine.

For awhile there weren’t very many changes tbh (between 2000 and 2016) … the last 7 years have been chaotic in comparison. The “evil software companies” love to advertise how many changes there are and how it is just so much that you really need to pay for their software…. the reality is that the vast majority of the changes to the tax code don’t affect the average person’s tax return. Also, as a professional tax person, I have now come around to the concept of the free file, pre-filled click and submit thing for people whose taxes are simple. Like if everything you are taxed on and can deduct is reported to the IRS already, and there isn’t anything else… you shouldn’t have to pay for help or software or spend much time dealing with it.

I can nerd out about it but … yeah, it is dumb

The stupid Trump Cock Jizz Act of 2017 was the biggest set of changes since 1986 … and it has a lot of really stupid provisions that need to go away ASAP