Tax Bill

[twa]

Just now, Springfield said:

 

In other words, no tax cut for one of the board’s staunchest conservatives.

 

Guess I should have spent more 

 

[Springfield]

1 minute ago, tshile said:

 

Youre not an idiot. Especially if you’re knowingly making that decision. It’s a choice. 

 

But generally taking interest free loan > giving interest free loan  

 

Fine.  I can agree to that since you specifically said that I’m not an idiot.  

[Sacks 'n' Stuff]

48 minutes ago, Springfield said:

In other words, no tax cut for one of the board’s staunchest conservatives.

I’m more of a conservative than he is.

[twa]

19 minutes ago, Sacks 'n' Stuff said:

I’m more of a conservative than he is.

 

Probably, I'm more a classical liberal.

 

enjoy your company 

[Sacks 'n' Stuff]

19 minutes ago, twa said:

enjoy your company 

I laughed. Every now and then it's nice to get a reminder of why we keep you around : -)

Edited February 12, 2019 by Sacks 'n' Stuff

[TheGreatBuzz]

3 hours ago, Springfield said:

 

 

And the whole conversation about how you should actually owe and if you get a refund then you’re a idiot for giving the government a free loan can suck a bag of dicks.  I like getting a nice little bump of cash at the beginning of the year.  If I didn’t over-withhold then I’d just end up wasting that money on frivolous BS like my kids or something.

There is something in this statement that if you did regularly, you'd also get a nice bump in pay.  Just a thought.

 

Anyways, just because you don't have the discipline to not spend your extra money does not make it a bad argument. 

[Renegade7]

On 2/11/2019 at 10:46 AM, tshile said:

 

As for the rest of your post - it’s not my problem nor my concern that other people don’t understand their taxes or cannot be financially responsible enough to deal with changes. 

 

Its on them to figure this out and theres plenty of resources available for them to figure it out. 

 

They want their hand held. They are adults, I don’t care that someone isn’t there to hold their hands. 

 

Jus to be clear, is there some kind of online calculator that van be used to help determine likely refund or owed amount? 

 

As much as I want to agree with you, I've never seen any attempt to make our tax code easy for the average person to understand, we aren't taught how to do it in school, when we should be. 

 

CNN did a piece on someone that got $10k refund last year then owed $10k this.  That seems like an extreme, I'm skepical, but is it fair for her to assume she wouldn't have a swing like that without a warning? 

[tshile]

3 minutes ago, Renegade7 said:

Jus to be clear, is there some kind of online calculator that van be used to help determine likely refund or owed amount? 

.... yes. The irs website has that and tons of other tools. 

 

 

5 minutes ago, Renegade7 said:

CNN did a piece on someone that got $10k refund last year then owed $10k this.  That seems like an extreme, 

This means nothing without information about their income. 

 

Nothing. 

[Renegade7]

3 minutes ago, tshile said:

.... yes. The irs website has that and tons of other tools. 

 

 

I'll check them out, but I'll still say tax code is more complex then people being ignorant.  I do support looking into government filing for us like some countries do even if Turbotax doesn't.

 

3 minutes ago, tshile said:

This means nothing without information about their income. 

 

Nothing. 

 

Agreed, most pieces they did like that said same job, same house, same spouse and kids, etc.  That state tax issue looks like it took a lot of victims, and in fairness, people were griping about that from get-go.  Now we here and it looks ugly, no other way to put it.  I know you say the money throughout the year made up for it, idk, I can't get down with that if all the sudden people that don't normally owe are all the sudden owing and this was supposed to be a tax cut.  Pretty sure those billionaires it was catered to arent owing.

[Springfield]

I don’t see how Trump gets around this being a tax increase in a debate.  He rightfully should be skewered for raising taxes.

 

Of course, his fans won’t admit it.

 

My boss, a Trump supporter, claimed that I was a 1% earner today when I told him that my taxes got ****ed by his boy Trump.  Ha!  This guy signs my paychecks, he knows for fact that I’m not a 1%er.

[LadySkinsFan]

You should tell your boss to give you a raise up into the 1%. 

[Cooked Crack]

6 minutes ago, Springfield said:

My boss, a Trump supporter, claimed that I was a 1% earner today when I told him that my taxes got ****ed by his boy Trump.  Ha!  This guy signs my paychecks, he knows for fact that I’m not a 1%er.

Be generous and ask if he wants to switch salaries.

[tshile]

25 minutes ago, Renegade7 said:

 

I'll check them out, but I'll still say tax code is more complex then people being ignorant.  I do support looking into government filing for us like some countries do even if Turbotax doesn't.

For the vast majority of people it’s not that complicated. 

 

Its for the more wealthy end of the spectrum that it gets complicated. Businesses become more complicated. 

 

So I don’t blame anyone for not understanding tax proposals and what their real impact is because most of the important stuff is on the complicated end, where 5% ish of the population plays. 

 

But when it comes to majority of people understanding their own taxes, there’s no excuse. It’s not that hard and it’s made easy to find on the irs website. 

 

Not to pick on you particularly, but for example, the fact that you didn’t know they had a calculator on their site for calculating your withholding with the new policy (they advertised it quite a bit to help people before it went into effect - ie: 2017) means you just didn’t even bother to look. Because even the smallest amount of effort would have resulted in you at least knowing it exists. 

30 minutes ago, Renegade7 said:

I know you say the money throughout the year made up for it, idk, I can't get down with that if all the sudden people that don't normally owe are all the sudden owing and this was supposed to be a tax cut. 

 

Just to be clear, I don’t say that. I say it’s possible. I say statements like “last year my refund was x and this year it’s y” are meaningless and empty. 

 

Im not a supporter of this tax policy. 

[Renegade7]

Just now, tshile said:

For the vast majority of people it’s not that complicated. 

 

Its for the more wealthy end of the spectrum that it gets complicated. Businesses become more complicated. 

 

So I don’t blame anyone for not understanding tax proposals and what their real impact is because most of the important stuff is on the complicated end, where 5% ish of the population plays. 

 

But when it comes to majority of people understanding their own taxes, there’s no excuse. It’s not that hard and it’s made easy to find on the irs website. 

 

Not to pick on you particularly, but for example, the fact that you didn’t know they had a calculator on their site for calculating your withholding with the new policy (they advertised it quite a bit to help people before it went into effect - ie: 2017) means you just didn’t even bother to look. Because even the smallest amount of effort would have resulted in you at least knowing it exists. 

 

It's all good, been doing my own taxes for a while now since did tax course at 20.  Was more hoping you'd bring one up you trusted, I'm sure there's plenty of calculators, but me finding one for me isnt the same as understanding how it works for people with way more to claim them I do. 

 

I've been doing it so long I dont get how someone cant do a 1040ez, but no one showed me. I went out my way to learn how to do it by paper, so Turbo Tax web app is exactly like you said, easy.

 

Think everyone should get an overview in high school. Because I know that cant do it they are more paranoid about getting it wrong then not knowing how to do it at all.

[Springfield]

The more I look at my own pay, the more it really looks like a scam.

 

I got taxed less on my paycheck resulting in more take home pay, great.  My overall tax owed increased though, so I was on the hook for all that extra money I was taking home.

 

Its just an amazingly poor way of taking more money from people.  Everyone’s tax burden must have gone up without the standard exemption.

[tshile]

8 minutes ago, Springfield said:

The more I look at my own pay, the more it really looks like a scam.

 

I got taxed less on my paycheck resulting in more take home pay, great.  My overall tax owed increased though, so I was on the hook for all that extra money I was taking home.

 

Thats why my employer pushed the calculators hard on everyone. 

 

I believe withholdings were automatically adjusted. And yeah, there’s an argument for it being a scam the way it was done. 

[PF Chang]

About 30% of people itemized prior to the changes, and generally people who itemize are well off. There's no personal exemptions anymore ($4,050) but the standard deduction went from $6,350 to $12,000, so people taking the standard deduction are getting a $1,600 benefit.

 

It's a tax cut for most people, though I'm guessing about half (the less rich half) of people who used to itemize get screwed. 

 

The administration should have done a better job of warning people about the withholding issues, the reason people aren't getting refunds. This administration is completely incompetent though, it's part of the price of electing a dumb game show host. 

 

The surprise of owing instead of getting a refund is not good and should have been emphasized  by the gov't. But it's not good that people are actually upset about getting more money throughout the year vs. getting a refund. You're effectively saying you'd pay the gov't to force you to save money instead of just putting the extra bit from each check into a savings account yourself. 

[Springfield]

11 minutes ago, tshile said:

 

Thats why my employer pushed the calculators hard on everyone. 

 

I believe withholdings were automatically adjusted. And yeah, there’s an argument for it being a scam the way it was done. 

 

Yeah, I don’t think my employer touched a thing with withholdings and just let the new formula work it’s magic.  And I’ll give it credit, they got my taxes WAY closer to being a zero bill/refund.  Only problem is that my family income went up by 3% but my tax owed went up by 20%.

 

Another fun fact:  If I didn’t have two kids, then we would have ended up owing $3500.

[tshile]

3 minutes ago, Springfield said:

Another fun fact:  If I didn’t have two kids, then we would have ended up owing $3500

 

Yup. You can claim a standard deduction up to 2 kids (so 4 total, 6k each I believe)

 

after that you get nothing. 

 

Do you not use daycare? We made too much under the old plan but they drastically increased the cap. That’s probavly what’s going to save us in this plan. 

[Springfield]

2 minutes ago, tshile said:

 

Yup. You can claim a standard deduction up to 2 kids (so 4 total, 6k each I believe)

 

after that you get nothing. 

 

Do you not use daycare? We made too much under the old plan but they drastically increased the cap. That’s probavly what’s going to save us in this plan. 

 

I used my mom for daycare (I pay her, but it’s just cash) so I can’t claim that.  Even so, we were above the threshold to get any credits for our kids before.

 

The standard exemption for 4 people, lowered my taxable income by $16k under the old plan though.  Plus add in another $5k that I was able to claim from SALT... now my taxable income jumps up $20k this year.

[PleaseBlitz]

5 minutes ago, Springfield said:

 

I used my mom for daycare (I pay her, but it’s just cash) so I can’t claim that.  Even so, we were above the threshold to get any credits for our kids before.

 

 

You should consider getting mom to stand up an LLC for tax evasion optimization purposes. 

[Springfield]

1 minute ago, PleaseBlitz said:

 

You should consider getting mom to stand up an LLC for tax evasion optimization purposes. 

 

Good lookin out fam

[Larry]

2 hours ago, Springfield said:

I don’t see how Trump gets around this being a tax increase in a debate.  He rightfully should be skewered for raising taxes.

 

I haven't seen anything that conclusively says that it is.  

[twa]

6 minutes ago, Larry said:

 

I haven't seen anything that conclusively says that it is.  

 

Not even all the whining about SALT?

[TheGoodBits]

1 hour ago, PleaseBlitz said:

 

You should consider getting mom to stand up an LLC for tax evasion optimization purposes. 

 

Is mom responsible for any taxes in that case (Social security, etc)? Same boat for me... we weren’t sure but thought there was tax liability, so have been paying my mother in law under the table.