Taxes!

thankfully i make little enuf that this isn't massive chunks of change we're talking about yet.

grrr.

also how fucked up is mass in that you get taxed MORE (and w/o most deductions, no less!) on out-of-state "investment"!? they only let you take out special in-state deductions for it, insteada the gamut, so my education deduction (which is xo!@%$@#ing huge) does no good.

[on the health insurance tip -- i need to figure out how to make sure the plan is "through" the business or whatever. yeah -- a tax atty could actually have probably saved me $ this year. next time round...]

now, if you fuXors only had money i could make a mint representing yer asses come audit time :-)

that said, yeah if you are self-employed and have business expenses you stand a better chance than if you are just self-employed and have no expenses. also, anything having to do w/ "flow-through entities" (basically, partnerships, limited liability companies, and S corporations) get a closer look (b/c of well-publicized instances of outright fraud wr2 such entities).

Audit-wise: I decided (about sixteen hours ago) that unless you're actively trying to scam the IRS, they're not worth getting paranoid about -- not unless you're dealing with really significant sums of money. Which isn't to say that I don't believe they'll audit you, or that it won't suck. But I started thinking about it, and the worst-case audit scenario I can imagine is that I'm unable to back up a couple small claims, which ... well, if you're in the student/freelance range that I am, the worst this could possibly mean is that you do wind up having to pay that $1500 you shaved off of your bill, plus penalties. Which would suck in countless ways, but it's not exactly life-ruining.

(This will be hilarious in fall when I start the thread that goes "they audited me! oh shit! I have to pay $62,000 in penalties or go to jail! I was wrong, I was wrong, I was wrong!")

not to needlessly scare the shit outta anyone (b/c nabisco is basically correct) -- but (a) the IRS has been underfunded for a while now [thankee dubya!] -- there are abusers and scammers who are quite well-known to the IRS and defrauding the government of MILLIONS of dollars, but they don't go after them simply because they don't have the resources to do so; and (b) the IRS HAS recently been going after small-fry "cheaters" esp wr2 the earned-income credit -- not that there isn't fraud and abuse there, but going after them is a political decision by Treasury [thankee again, dubya].

Actually, Tad, it's funny -- you can practically see in the IRS documentation that they're trying to keep people from claiming the EIC. It took me hours to sort through vague, discouraging documentation to see if the dollar limit applied to adjusted gross income or flat earnings, and every other page seemed to be "DO NOT CLAIM THIS, SERIOUSLY, IT'S NOT FOR YOU, DON'T EVEN DO THE WORKSHEET."

What if that same person, flush from her recent successes, tried the same strategy in VA circa '96 and when a letter was sent to her, her mom sent them a letter back saying she was in Japan, and the taxman was not heard from again?

Overheard five minutes later at a different booth: Do you think I should get my blood pressure checked on tax day?! Haha!

Ahh, corporate humor!

Taxes fucking sucked it this year. Bad witholding = I owes .. uh ... LOT. But for the first time ever, I don't owe the city anything.

I'm annoyed at the paltry tuition deductions they allow, too; a $4000/year cap doesn't come anywhere close to reflecting the cost of higher education; it'd barely cover tuition and fees at a community college! (And lord, if there's anything people should be able to spend money on tax-free, it's education that will theoretically lead to their paying a hell of a lot more taxes in the future.)

hey assuming everything goes okay and I have my kid in december, I get to claim it as a deduction for the whole year, right? right?

Thanks for the $5 check I recieved int he mail today. Thanks for spending my tax money and everyone else's on the bookkeeping/paperwork neccesary to send out $5 checks. Really.

xoxo,
mouse

Anyway, I carry all of my delicate financial information to a woman who has an office off of MacArthur down by Starlite, next door to a liquor store. She's got me hundreds of dollars back from the IRS and the state, and she charges me like a hundred bucks to do it.

Are job-hunting expenses also allowed to deducted?