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Thanks for the info, pros.moana posted:High five, fellow first year VITA volunteer with a coordinator that hasn't emailed you about the schedule yet! I am so excited to gently caress up someone's taxes I passed my tests and everything but I need to do way more practice to 1. Be able to do a complete return in less than an hour and 2. Mitigate loving up some poor E3's entire life
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Jan 23, 2019 23:28
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BonerGhost posted:Thanks for the info, pros.
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Jan 23, 2019 23:31
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lol I just finished a first pass at my 2018 taxes and I owe $15,000 to the federal government. Guessing this is because of hosed up withholding at the beginning of the year?
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Jan 24, 2019 02:47
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Illusive gently caress Man posted:lol I just finished a first pass at my 2018 taxes and I owe $15,000 to the federal government. Maybe! Hard to say w/o moar info
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Jan 24, 2019 04:11
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My mom passed away last year. If I have her W-2 and SSN, can I just do a free file for her online or do I need something else special?
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Jan 24, 2019 04:46
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Illusive gently caress Man posted:lol I just finished a first pass at my 2018 taxes and I owe $15,000 to the federal government. Ummm...sure? I mean if you didn't realize investment gains or do 1099 work or something and you're just a W2 employee then absolutely yes you hosed up your withholdings, or your company's payroll department did. Use this: https://www.irs.gov/individuals/irs-withholding-calculator
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Jan 24, 2019 05:01
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Badger of Basra posted:My mom passed away last year. If I have her W-2 and SSN, can I just do a free file for her online or do I need something else special? Is she getting a refund? Are you the personal representative, or executor of the estate? At a minimum you need to write "DECEASED" on the top of the return, along with the date of death. If there's a refund you need to attach a Form 1310 and the court appointment naming ypu personal rep or a copy of the will listing you as executor.
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Jan 24, 2019 05:59
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axeil posted:My girlfriend and I are getting married this year ( Try also mocking up a return as if you were already married filling jointly to get an idea of how marriage will affect your situations. Also be aware that the "married" withholding rates assume your spouse doesn't work, so you both should probably continue to withhold at single rates unless one of your incomes is way, way nicer than the other.
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Jan 24, 2019 06:04
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urnisme posted:Try also mocking up a return as if you were already married filling jointly to get an idea of how marriage will affect your situations. Also be aware that the "married" withholding rates assume your spouse doesn't work, so you both should probably continue to withhold at single rates unless one of your incomes is way, way nicer than the other. Also unless you both have high almost equal incomes or need to consider student loan repayment schedules (those consider your AGI, which goes higher when combing both incomes as MFJ), it is unlikely that married filing separately will work out better, but if need be you can check that as well (note MFS is NOT filing as single, would not believe how many times I've had to correct that...).
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Jan 24, 2019 10:20
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MadDogMike posted:Also unless you both have high almost equal incomes or need to consider student loan repayment schedules (those consider your AGI, which goes higher when combing both incomes as MFJ), it is unlikely that married filing separately will work out better, but if need be you can check that as well (note MFS is NOT filing as single, would not believe how many times I've had to correct that...). She has a lot of student loans that are subject to income-based repayment. Do we need to file as MFS instead of MFJ?
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Jan 24, 2019 14:21
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axeil posted:She has a lot of student loans that are subject to income-based repayment. Do we need to file as MFS instead of MFJ? Maybe. She'll want to call up the Sallie Mae successor she uses and find out how much she'll have to repay using the MFJ income versus the MFS income.
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Jan 24, 2019 16:09
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This past year I over contributed to my HSA by $1500. I withdrew the excess funds, but my W-2 doesnt show that. Do I just simply include both the $1500 contribution as well as the $2ish of interest I earned on that amount in the Other Income line on schedule 1?
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Jan 24, 2019 17:29
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Initio posted:This past year I over contributed to my HSA by $1500. I withdrew the excess funds, but my W-2 doesnt show that. Copy/pasting a comment I wrote to somebody about excess contributions on reddit previous: quote:...because your excess contributions were employer contributions and assuming the rest of your contributions were also through payroll deductions then the values on your 8889 will look like this: I'm not a tax guy (I'm just some nerd on the internet) so please feel free to get this double checked but this is what I learned from the experience myself. Hoodwinker fucked around with this message at 17:37 on Jan 24, 2019 |
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Jan 24, 2019 17:32
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I can't understand why I never get a tax refund. I made $55k this year. I paid $6000 in federal taxes, and $2000 in state taxes. I'm getting $588 back from the feds, but I owe $612 to the state, so I net -$30. Shouldn't I be getting a few hundred dollars back at least? Taxes hurt my small brain.
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Jan 24, 2019 22:29
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RCarr posted:I can't understand why I never get a tax refund. Because your withholding is correct. The optimal situation is to get nothing back and owe nothing.
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Jan 24, 2019 22:35
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RCarr posted:I can't understand why I never get a tax refund. I made $55k this year. I paid $6000 in federal taxes, and $2000 in state taxes. I'm getting $588 back from the feds, but I owe $612 to the state, so I net -$30. Shouldn't I be getting a few hundred dollars back at least? Taxes hurt my small brain. Motronic posted:Because your withholding is correct. The optimal situation is to get nothing back and owe nothing.
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Jan 24, 2019 22:35
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Hoodwinker posted:Just because they're netting near zero between state and fed I wouldn't say they're withholding correctly. Ideally you get a refund of close to $0 on both. I agree the net outcome is the same but man it would bother me to have that imbalance. So what do I do? Ask my accounting department why they suck?
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Jan 24, 2019 22:41
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RCarr posted:So what do I do? Ask my accounting department why they suck? this is not an accounting department issue it's based on how you filled out your W-4 you can fill out a new W-4 if you would like!
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Jan 24, 2019 23:01
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RCarr posted:So what do I do? Ask my accounting department why they suck?
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Jan 24, 2019 23:01
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RCarr posted:I can't understand why I never get a tax refund. I made $55k this year. I paid $6000 in federal taxes, and $2000 in state taxes. I'm getting $588 back from the feds, but I owe $612 to the state, so I net -$30. Shouldn't I be getting a few hundred dollars back at least? Taxes hurt my small brain. Thanks for this, you're prepping me for getting asked this question a million times during tax season. Fun fact, the withholding tables are all bad and dumb and will be really bad and dumb this year. Normally a person filing Single and 1 in my state (NY) will get a small refund/break even with the Federal Govt and owe money to NYS because NYS is cheap as hell and they engineer no cushion into their tables. This year the IRS hosed up their tables because the new Tax Law was created by clowns and morons so I'm expecting a lot of people to owe who don't usually. Pray for me and other tax preparers this year.
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Jan 24, 2019 23:12
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Hoodwinker posted:Just because they're netting near zero between state and fed I wouldn't say they're withholding correctly. Ideally you get a refund of close to $0 on both. I agree the net outcome is the same but man it would bother me to have that imbalance. Well, yeah.....the imbalance is a (likely correctable) problem, but overall this is much better than a lot of people are doing.
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Jan 24, 2019 23:13
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axeil posted:She has a lot of student loans that are subject to income-based repayment. Do we need to file as MFS instead of MFJ? Having been in this exact same situation and prepped complete mock up tax returns to evaluate the consequences, it is very unlikely that it will be to your advantage to MFS rather than MFJ in order to benefit from student loan IBR. Our MFS tax penalty was colossal, approximately 15% of federal tax owed. There is no easy way around joint spouse AGI for the purpose of IBR and depending upon how big your loans are and how big the benefit of IBR is, you should do a financial analysis of actually getting married before you do it.
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Jan 24, 2019 23:19
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Epi Lepi posted:Thanks for this, you're prepping me for getting asked this question a million times during tax season.
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Jan 24, 2019 23:27
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Epi Lepi posted:Thanks for this, you're prepping me for getting asked this question a million times during tax season. Yeah this has been on my mind, I couldn't find anything about it and I couldn't remember whether it was this year or last. I am super not excited about telling a bunch of people with low income that they owe thanks to a bunch of assholes who hosed them over and basically lied about it.
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Jan 24, 2019 23:41
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BonerGhost posted:Yeah this has been on my mind, I couldn't find anything about it and I couldn't remember whether it was this year or last. Huh, it seems withholding may have been screwed across the board. I'm owing over $20k estimated despite no changes in filing status, adding a dependent, and no W-4 changes.
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Jan 25, 2019 02:08
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Hi thread first time posting sorry if I'm breaking any rules. I had about $3.5k in medical expenses for 2018 which well exceeds 10% of my grossly income, yet Turbo Tax is saying it's not deductible and it's looking like I owe Uncle Sam a big chunk of money despite that. These are legitimate expenses I was in hospital for a week and had multiple follow ups and exams. Fyi Should I see a real accountant or is Turbo Tax being fair and accurate here? Thanks.
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Jan 25, 2019 06:18
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To deduct medical expenses you have to itemize instead of taking the standard deduction, and the standard deduction for 2018 is 12,000 dollars.
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Jan 25, 2019 06:48
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So I did some self-employed gig stuff this year and I've got my federal taxes all figured out, but have a few state-related things that I can't quite figure out from the documentation I have: For Georgia taxes: 1) Do I absolutely have to file the form 500 rather than the EZ version? I'm assuming that my self-employed income doesn't count in "wages, salaries, tips, dividends, and interest income only" and thus the answer is yes. 2) Do I need to list said self-employment income on Schedule 1 somehow? Under additions as "other"?
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Jan 25, 2019 08:03
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Action-Bastard posted:Hi thread first time posting sorry if I'm breaking any rules. sale on Banksy art posted:To deduct medical expenses you have to itemize instead of taking the standard deduction, and the standard deduction for 2018 is 12,000 dollars. To add to this - if some chunk of these medical expenses are going to be recurring in nature, you really should consider a health savings account. Health savings accounts are deductible regardless of whether you itemize or not.
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Jan 25, 2019 10:45
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taiyoko posted:So I did some self-employed gig stuff this year and I've got my federal taxes all figured out, but have a few state-related things that I can't quite figure out from the documentation I have: 1 - definitely, need to use full Form 500 for business income. 2 - The Schedule 1 is for additions/subtractions from the federal AGI for Georgia tax purposes (which you probably do not have) and retirement income exclusion. If neither of those apply, dont use it. If you are retired and have self employment income, it goes on line 2 of the retirement income exclusion page of the Schedule 1. BonerGhost posted:Yeah this has been on my mind, I couldn't find anything about it and I couldn't remember whether it was this year or last. Oddly enough so far refunds have been mostly the same for my W-2 only people, the drop in withholding matched the change in tax perfectly. A few exceptions though, and itemized deduction people are probably screwed.
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Jan 26, 2019 16:52
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MadDogMike posted:1 - definitely, need to use full Form 500 for business income. Thanks for the answer! Once I get my w2 from the temp agency, everything will be ready to go! A lot easier than I expected, considering TurboTax was gonna charge me $80 for federal and state because of the self-employment stuff, so I'm glad I said "gently caress that noise, I'll do it myself". (I was able to do the numbers part for the w2 job based in my last paycheck's year-to-date on both gross income and taxes paid) taiyoko fucked around with this message at 19:44 on Jan 26, 2019 |
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Jan 26, 2019 19:42
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MadDogMike posted:1 - definitely, need to use full Form 500 for business income. That's good news, I hope I see that. Does this hold for your retired people drawing pensions/SS?
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Jan 26, 2019 20:33
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My wife quit her job at a small business where she was a financial analyst for them. The business liked her enough that they offered her a consulting gig to help them out. This gig will allow her to work from home. We just created a single member LLC for this purpose with our state and also just created a business checking account and debit/credit cards as well. I understand that we should not mingle business and personal expenses. However, there are some expenses that sorta straddles both. For example, our cable internet bill, our cell phone bill, utilities... i think we also need to buy a new iphone for her too since hers is falling apart. I guess this is a 2 part question: 1) Is it ok if we use our business credit/debit cards to pay for this from the IRS perspective? From a tax perspective, we would only expense what we use for our business (for example, i guess we would only expense half of the cell phone bill for business purposes, and whatever fraction of our utilities goes to our bedroom which is her office based on square footage of the house). That IRS is ok with that, right? 2) If someone sues her, would using the business debit/credit cards allow them to pierce the corporate veil and attack our personal assets because these expenses are technically both personal and business expenses?
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Jan 27, 2019 04:28
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Mister Fister posted:
Your bedroom can't be your home office unless you stop using it for sleeping.
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Jan 27, 2019 14:33
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Mister Fister posted:My wife quit her job at a small business where she was a financial analyst for them. The business liked her enough that they offered her a consulting gig to help them out. This gig will allow her to work from home. We just created a single member LLC for this purpose with our state and also just created a business checking account and debit/credit cards as well. 1. Yes that is fine. FYI be careful with a home office deduction as the IRS rules require that the space be used only for business and is at least historically/in theory a hot button for audits. A guest bedroom qua office probably does not count. 2. Not that specific fact. Consult an attorney in your state and profession, but a single member LLC that only provides professional services probably offers no meaningful protection of corporate veil to your personal assets. Your wife should have ample E&O or malpractice insurance to the standard of her industry.
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Jan 27, 2019 14:44
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You can subdivide a room though if I am remembering correctly. But your wife cant use that desk to play video games or whatever it has to be dedicated to the business.
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Jan 27, 2019 14:58
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So I think my company payroll is messing up my withholding a bit. It's resulting in a pretty massive tax payment due for 2018 when we've never had to owe before. I could use some confirmation on this. MFJ, both make about the same amount. We both claim zero allowances on our W4s. In 2016 I paid $17k in taxes. In 2017 we moved from TN to FL and I started another job. My TN job withheld $13k and my FL job withheld $3k. For 2018 my FL job withheld...$10k. We usually get around $1800-$2500 back as a refund. Now we owe $3500. I fully understand I should have been paying more attention to this. I did the IRS withholding calculator and it said we need to be having more taken out. What I don't understand is how, with no changes to our W4s and my new job not paying a lot more than my old job, the amount withheld is sooo much lower for me, yet my wife's amount withheld didn't change at all. The only changing factor here is my new company. Does this sound right? Something seems off. The amount we are short is like half of the change in salary from my old job to my new job.
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Jan 27, 2019 23:51
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Did you have the same number of allowances on the w-4 when you changed jobs? Double check with payroll that you're at married & zero. If that's the case, keep in mind that the Trump administration directed the IRS to change the withholding tables so that people could see the benefit of the new tax cut immediately (well, before the election)! Cynics have suggested that the TCJA didn't actually cut most people's taxes, but they wanted it to appear to have done so, so the withholding was reduced with the expectation that you'd pay the remainder of the taxes in April, after the election.
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Jan 28, 2019 00:38
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BonerGhost posted:That's good news, I hope I see that. Does this hold for your retired people drawing pensions/SS? Haven't seen those folks yet really, though did see one person working/drawing SS get screwed by income (and therefore taxable SS) going up but withholding not going up enough to compensate. It seems like if you're only earning W-2 income the new setup actually does what they claimed and keeps you with the same refund while getting more per paycheck, but the problem of course is part of the reason most people get refunds is because withholding is supposed to take enough extra tax to cover all the items that don't have withholding, and I suspect the new setup is worse at that so enough non W-2 income screws you. Also people who have ITINs for their children can't take a full allowance for them because they don't get the same child tax credit, which has screwed several of my clients as a CAA. And of course the states have their own withholding tables that may or may not cause issues. freeasinbeer posted:You can subdivide a room though if I am remembering correctly. Yeah, they can quite seriously wind up sending someone to knock on your door and demand to see the office space and ding you if they so much as see a kid's toy there. At minimum in my office at least the usual recommendation is to take a picture to be able to show it's set aside for business there. Anything you "split" for business should also be documented as much as you can for safety (guessing phone usage between business/personal gets... iffy quick) unless it's split by an accepted way like business miles for driving or square footage in the case of home offices, and even those might get challenged. Omne posted:So I think my company payroll is messing up my withholding a bit. It's resulting in a pretty massive tax payment due for 2018 when we've never had to owe before. I could use some confirmation on this. Normally W-4 withholding is pretty standardized (current year changes aside, but even those shouldn't mess up THAT badly for the same income if I understand the math right) so a different company shouldn't have affected it. Did you pick Married instead of Single on the W-4 by mistake? Otherwise maybe the company did screw something up somehow, or maybe some of the compensation got withheld differently (bonuses usually have a different rate of withholding, or maybe they had to include non-cash contributions of some kind in your wages that weren't withheld right).
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Jan 28, 2019 00:48
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sullat posted:Did you have the same number of allowances on the w-4 when you changed jobs? Double check with payroll that you're at married & zero. MadDogMike posted:
I just double-checked and my W4 is the same: Married and zero allowances. I went ahead and updated it to take out an additional $300/check, but something still seems off. My wife makes virtually the same amount as me, has the same W4 as me, yet she has $7k more taken out.
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Jan 28, 2019 01:01
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