Admiral101 posted:

Were you prompted about how many hours you spend involved in that <$3,200> rental activity per year?

edit: software might be treating as you as a real estate professional for some reason. That's the only explanation I can come up with.

Nifty posted:

Good job Credit Karma

MadDogMike posted:

AbbiTheDog posted:

Xenoborg posted:

Oops, I think I haven't been getting my foreign tax credit correctly applied for the past several years:

For the last 3 years, my 1099-DIV from Vanguard has $20-$50 in the "Foreign Tax Paid (Box 6)" Column. I've input the 1099s into H&R Block including that amount. Shouldn't that amount then show up as a credit on From 1040 Line 48 "Foreign tax credit"?

Xenoborg posted:

So I was going to use Credit Karma, but they are missing it too, as well as one of my state credit I have no way to input.

I'm thinking I should just use the IRS forms directly, I have a template from last year...

Is there any way to e-file the forms myself, or do I have to mail them if I'm manually filling them out? freefilefillableforms.com is linked from irs.gov, but other than that looks and sounds super sketchy.

Omne posted:

Got married in 2016, so this is the first time I'm filing for both my wife and I together (MFJ). I'm using TurboTax, and when I put in everything on our respective W2s, at the close-out of the Wages & Income section, it said I was over the limit for 401k contributions. I'm not, nor is my wife, but combined we are over $18k. I went back to the W&I section and made sure it listed one W2 for me and one for my wife, so I'm hoping that fixed it. Any other ideas?

Droo posted:

Yes I believe so. H&R block missed the same foreign tax credit for me about 5 years ago because their software is bad - it caused me to switch to TurboTax which has never had a problem. I had to refile that year and made my stupid tax spreadsheet accurate to the dollar so it won't happen again - thanks crappy software!

89 posted:

I'm trying to pay off my balance of my taxes from last year. I've got the full amount. But I'm super confused as to how I'm supposed to pay it because irs.gov is seemingly out of 1998.

Using: https://directpay.irs.gov/directpay/

Do I select Installment Agreement or Tax Return or Notice?

I feel like I'm just throwing a thousand dollars into a black hole and just hoping it somehow reaches its correct destination. The IRS notice I recieved in the mail is a LT11

PuTTY riot posted:

My wife got short term disability pay when she was on leave. Didn't realize there was another form for that and that it was a third party deal. Man. Really getting owned by filing early this year. Oops.

Epi Lepi posted:

Yeah once you're an adult it's never really smart to file before the end of January. My firm has a couple clients who swear up and down they have everything and they can file and then OH WAIT I JUST GOT THIS 1099 WITH THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS OF STOCK TRANSACTIONS IS THAT GONNA CHANGE MY RETURN??

BAE OF PIGS posted:

I should have looked this over before I submitted, but I put $1655 into my roth ira this last year, and my AGI was 44,510. Shouldn't I have gotten a credit of $166? Line 34 of my 1040A is showing up blank.


edit: maybe not. form 8880 is confusing me. I'm guessing turbotax probably got it right, but I thought I would have gotten some kind of credit since I was under 46,125

Hufflepuff or bust! posted:

Unless you're married filing jointly or head of household, the income cap for this credit was $30,750 for 2016.

surf rock posted:

I have a buddy who keeps telling me I should do itemized deductions instead of the standard deduction because I work from home (remote work for a nonprofit in another state), but I dunno if he's right.

He says I could deduct a portion of my rent/utilities/internet equal to my "office space" (which would be my living room since that's where my desk is, I guess? But my living room is basically the same as my dining room and my entryway because it's an apartment. Does all of it count? This part really confuses me). All of that only amounts to a little over ten thousand over the course of the year, though, and the relevant portion would only be half of that at most.

I don't have any charitable deductions that I could prove to the IRS via receipts or something. I would be filing single and not as somebody else's dependent. My medical expenses were pretty minor and wouldn't pass the AGI threshold. My county and state income taxes amount to a little over three thousand each year at this income.

I guess that if half of my living space technically counted as an office because it's a big open room with my work desk in it, half of my rent/utilities/internet would be about $5,000 each year and $3,000 in local + state taxes would mean an itemized deduction of $8,000, which is indeed more than the standard deduction.

Am I thinking this through correctly, or am I missing something?

sullat posted:

The space has to be exclusively used for your work. If you also have dinner there, watch TV, screw, or do other non-work activities in that space it wouldn't qualify. Now if you truly only use a portion of your apartment for work, you have passed the main hurdle, but it can be a hard one to prove.

Night Danger Moose posted:

I live in MD, my husband lives in TX. I haven't seen him since I moved away in March of 2012 - no contact whatsoever other than one or two skype messaging conversations. Should I still pick Married Filing Single as my status or should I be doing Single now? Or Legally Separated?

Harry posted:

I was wondering about some 2017 tax planning. The IRA contribution was made for 2016 (non-deductible), and I'm going to backdoor it into my roth IRA sometime this year. I'm not sure if I'll have any 401k contributions this year, so I could theoretically be able to make a deductible contribution to my IRA for 2017. Does anyone know how this will effect my backdoor contribution? I've tried googling it but I can't find the right jumble of keywords.

DaveSauce posted:

Kind of an odd question, but we bought a house in 2016 and we'll be itemizing our deductions.

The question is on property tax. As I understand it, city/county/state property taxes are deductible on your federal return. My question is, is it based on what year the taxes are for, or when they're actually paid?

So when we bought the house in April 2016, we paid a pro-rated property tax amount to the previous owner for the taxes they had already paid for 2016. This amount is on our closing form somewhere. But then we got the next year's tax bill a few months later, and it was paid in November 2016 by our escrow account.

That means in 2016 we paid for the partial year, as well as the next full year. I guess I don't know if the "tax year" falls on the calendar year...I can't find anything explicit on the county's website, but I can probably back-calculate if necessary.

So bottom line: would we deduct both tax bills from our 2016 taxes? Or do we only deduct the partial year bill (paid at closing) from our taxes?

Ancillary Character posted:

I believe your traditional IRA balance on December 31st of the year you do the conversion is what gets looked at with regards to the pro-rata rule, so it will hit you if you don't manage to roll that deductible contribution into a 401k before December 31st.

urnisme posted:

Deduct what your escrow account paid in 2016 and the amount of property tax allocated to you in the closing documents. Both amounts are probably for taxes that came due in 2016-at least here half of the year's taxes are due in the spring and half in the fall.

DaveSauce posted:

That's what I figured, thanks!

So for a rule of thumb, would I assume that if the tax (whatever it is) was PAID in 2016, then it would be listed on 2016 deductions?

The other tax I'm subject to is vehicle property tax (which is separate from registration/license fees). Since that definitely does not align with the calendar around here, I would assume when I paid it in Feb 2016, then whatever that tax is gets deducted even though it applies to part of 2017.

scribe jones posted:

Yup. "Deduct it in the year you paid it" is the rule 99.9% of the time for individuals.

TheAngryDrunk posted:

I received a 1099-MISC for a photography job I did. As part of the job, I hired makeup artists and rented a studio. I included these expenses in my rate to the client. So my actual income from this project was much less than the total listed on the 1099-MISC. How can I avoid paying taxes on the amount that were expenses?

Harminoff posted:

Anyone else having issues signing up on irs.com ? I have an id pin however somehow lost it, and I'm trying to sign up at https://www.irs.gov/individuals/get-an-identity-protection-pin and keep getting this error after entering my address.
A technical problem has occurred. Please try your request again later.

Beyond frustrating.

scribe jones posted:

if you aren't divorced or legally separated under state law, you're stuck with married filing separate. living apart isn't enough to qualify you for filing single. see IRS publication 501.