Octopus Overlords

Scuzz wrote:With the recent increases in standard deductions many people no longer have "deductible" property taxes or other taxes. I just think you have to look at the whole and not just the base rate. Every time you have to pay a fee for a government "service" you are being taxed. Fees are the new lexicon for tax increase.



ps.....feel free to donate more money to the government...they will take it you know.

Yes, that's a nicely dismissive attitude. An increase in the standard deduction just means you have more you can deduct without having to itemize. That doesn't prevent anyone from itemizing.

If I'm making over 6 figures a year and I'm paying less than 20% in Fed and State income taxes, it's awfully hard to argue that the upper middle class are hideously overburdened, much less the really wealthy. I'd love to see us get closer to traditional conservative tax rates like we had with Eisenhower.

So you believe the rich should pay more than everyone else because they can.....that fair and equitable have no reason.

First, in many places in the country $100,000 a year is not big money. Try buying a house in the Bay Area in a location you would want earning that kind of money. Secondly, there is something inherently wrong in stating that because you have more you should pay a higher percentage. The fact is based on their income they do probably pay more in all the other taxes and assessments.

As for the tax rates you cite......I would wager that sales taxes, property taxes and all other fees and services were much smaller (or non-existant) then as compared to now.

Scuzz wrote:So you believe the rich should pay more than everyone else because they can.....that fair and equitable have no reason.

Um - yes. That's called a progressive tax system. Earning what I do, I should pay a higher percentage than somebody who is making $50,000 a year, because I have a much higher disposable income.

Apparently the alternative is to simply keep putting everything on the credit card forever, or decide that teachers shouldn't be payed a living wage. If our financial system is that dire, then we absolutely should be asking people like me to pay more.

Okay...we are probably beyond the original topic and into social issues so I think I will just agree that we will dis-agree. On many things.



An aside.....my tax return that was e-filed and rejected because of some IRS computer problem was accepted by their computers on Monday. They must have resolved their software problem with the form, whichever one it was.

Juts got back from Vegas and had a surprise in the mailbox. Package from the accountant with a $7k return to sign. Wish I had known that while I was *in* Vegas.

gbasden wrote:If I'm making over 6 figures a year and I'm paying less than 20% in Fed and State income taxes, it's awfully hard to argue that the upper middle class are hideously overburdened, much less the really wealthy. I'd love to see us get closer to traditional conservative tax rates like we had with Eisenhower.

Maybe I need to talk to your tax guy.

I just did my Federal, being out of work half the year, I made quite a bit less than 6 figures (still upper 5) and owe 20% federal and I haven't even looked at state yet (4% I think). I owe about $4,000 in Federal tax at the moment and don't even want to look at state.

I wish there was some way to claim a foreign dependent.

Jeff V wrote: I just did my Federal, being out of work half the year, I made quite a bit less than 6 figures (still upper 5) and owe 20% federal and I haven't even looked at state yet (4% I think). I owe about $4,000 in Federal tax at the moment and don't even want to look at state.

A bit under 11.5% here in terms of Tax/AGI.

The government really likes sticking it to single people. don't they.

Jeff V wrote:The government really likes sticking it to single people. don't they.

Heh. MHS and I filed as single and compared to what we'd have owed filing as married, saved over $6,000.00.

Jeff V wrote:Maybe I need to talk to your tax guy.

I just did my Federal, being out of work half the year, I made quite a bit less than 6 figures (still upper 5) and owe 20% federal and I haven't even looked at state yet (4% I think). I owe about $4,000 in Federal tax at the moment and don't even want to look at state.

I wish there was some way to claim a foreign dependent.

You need more deductions and get married filing jointly, Jeff V. Once you get her here, that's covered. State still a flat 3% for 2010.

Jeff V wrote:The government really likes sticking it to single people. don't they.

They don't stick it to me! I make 6 figures. My effective federal tax rate for 2008 was 14.43%, and my effective tax rate for 2009 was 14.38%. I haven't finished my 2010 return yet, but I'm guessing it will be similar.

Effective Tax Rate
2010 - 12.85%
2009 - 12.87%
2008 - 12.35%
2007 - 9.82%
2006 - 9.42%
2005 - 10.66%

I changed jobs between 2007 and 2008 with a 50% increase in pay.

Last year, mine was 16.7%. This year it's 19.7%.

I also don't own any property -- can't afford it paying those tax rates.

Jeff V wrote:Last year, mine was 16.7%. This year it's 19.7%.

I also don't own any property -- can't afford it paying those tax rates.

Not owning any property is probably the biggest reason why you get to bend over and take it from the tax man.

would there be any way an accountant be worth the cost if one owns no property, housing or vehicles, pays child support on a non-qualifying dependent child, and with no stocks or investments? it seems pretty straightforward to me to do the taxes on my own. please PM me if you have any suggestions. (i'm already taking the student loan exemptions.)

Buying a VW diesel gave me a tax credit of $1700. They didn't ask for any proof though, sure I am going to get audited.

With all the money I got back I bought a gun. I think I am turing redneck. This has to be the least exciting tax refund in my life, even if it is the most.

Our CPA answered my wife's emails this morning and they have set an appointment for next Friday. Looks like we're going to beat the deadline.

Still waiting for my BIL to send me his mother's prescription expenses. He says the total is a little more than $2000 so if he doesn't send the docs by the end of next week I'll just go with that number. I don't reckon the IRS gets around to auditing many $20,000 returns from 81-year-old women anyway.

My taxes where done and mailed in a month ago. Imagine my surprise when I got a fat envelope from the IRS containing my 1040s and an additional letter pointing out that we never signed them. Sigh.

My wife's currently a contract programmer. She's an employee of the contract firm, working onsite. She has traveled for the customer multiple times, and been reimbursed for travel expenses to the tune of about $3,000.

Now, every time she traveled it was a major pain in the fanny (aside from the fact that she absolutely hates to travel). I believe the customer would have been content to just cut her a reimbursement check (they treat her like an employee in virtually every way, with a laptop, blackberry, and security access that contractors there never have), but the contract firm insisted on processing it through their offices (possibly for nefarious "we run this through our books and it makes us look more profitable" reasons, but more likely just because they thought they needed to for some inane and unspecified reason) which doubled the paperwork for my wife and added weeks to the reimbursement process.

All of which was manageable until tax time, when she received a 1099-misc for "non-employee compensation" in the amount of that three grand in travel reimbursements. Fucking income, are you serious?? We're being taxed to the tune of like 500 bucks on that shit. Aaargh! Morons! So now she needs to try to get them to sort it out pronto so I don't need to fart around with filing an extension (which I realize is easy, I just don't want to have to do it) and more importantly so I can get my goddamn refund from the government (which ought to be $500 bigger than Turbotax currently tells me it will be, since I entered the 1099 before we figured out why she'd received it. She's never been a contractor before, nor have I, so we weren't initially sure what to make of it.)

Goddamn this pisses me off. Taxes suck badly enough without some bonehead in finance turning travel reimbursements into frickin' income.

Odin wrote: she received a 1099-misc for "non-employee compensation" in the amount of that three grand in travel reimbursements. Fucking income, are you serious??

If she has receipts and an expense report, it should be very simple to neutralize that "income" -- which you really want to do to avoid paying self-employment tax -- by filing a Schedule SE. I'm assuming that you don't have to deal with a home office, equipment depreciation, and all that crap that drives us into the arms of a CPA every year.

Self employment tax is like salt in a wound.

Mine are done. Lost a dependent, but still getting about $7k refund, fed and state combined.

Kraken wrote:

Odin wrote: she received a 1099-misc for "non-employee compensation" in the amount of that three grand in travel reimbursements. Fucking income, are you serious??

If she has receipts and an expense report, it should be very simple to neutralize that "income" -- which you really want to do to avoid paying self-employment tax -- by filing a Schedule SE. I'm assuming that you don't have to deal with a home office, equipment depreciation, and all that crap that drives us into the arms of a CPA every year.

Self employment tax is like salt in a wound.

Thanks for the tip! Our initial plan is to contact the employer and get THEM to file the necessary paperwork to correct their screw-up. If that fails, I'll look at the form you suggest (hopefully Turbotax knows that one).

We don't have any home-office expenses for my wife, those are all mine (as a writer). They're pretty mundane - a small home-office, a computer/printer, a desk, and some office supplies like paper and toner. Turbotax seems to be able to handle it pretty easily so no CPA for us thus far.

Finished.

Now I get to send $1200 to the feds and $450 to the state of Oregon.

Exodor wrote:Finished.

Now I get to send $1200 to the feds and $450 to the state of Oregon.

not to be nosy, but did you have any big medical bills? Did you deduct them? (there's qualifications of course, only you can answer)

naednek wrote:not to be nosy, but did you have any big medical bills? Did you deduct them? (there's qualifications of course, only you can answer)

Not in the 2010 tax year.

Next year, on the other hand...

Went yesterday. Adjusting with my witholdings worked, owed money to the IRS but not a whole lot. Even with the wife being a good citizen and reporting all her cash business.

Just call me Transocean.

Exodor wrote:

naednek wrote:not to be nosy, but did you have any big medical bills? Did you deduct them? (there's qualifications of course, only you can answer)

Not in the 2010 tax year.

Next year, on the other hand...

for some reason i kept think it was quite a while when that happened. Having a kid just kills your perception of time.

E-filed my MIL's federal and state returns today. Got it done in a record 2 hours. She is getting $1200 of her property taxes back, same as every year.

Wife met with out CPA on Friday and went over all of our docs with him. Now we're just waiting for him to plug in the numbers and spit out the forms. We should know the extent of the damage just in time to make our Q1 estimated payments. Yay.

Odin wrote:

Kraken wrote:

Odin wrote: she received a 1099-misc for "non-employee compensation" in the amount of that three grand in travel reimbursements. Fucking income, are you serious??

If she has receipts and an expense report, it should be very simple to neutralize that "income" -- which you really want to do to avoid paying self-employment tax -- by filing a Schedule SE. I'm assuming that you don't have to deal with a home office, equipment depreciation, and all that crap that drives us into the arms of a CPA every year.

Self employment tax is like salt in a wound.

Thanks for the tip! Our initial plan is to contact the employer and get THEM to file the necessary paperwork to correct their screw-up. If that fails, I'll look at the form you suggest (hopefully Turbotax knows that one).

Success! The employer sent a corrected form to us (and the IRS) with the amount zeroed out. I just have to go in and complete the e-file, and I'm done!

Done! E-filed them last night. Began around midnight and finished up in about 45 min.
We were sure we were going to owe big this year, but actually it wasn't as painful as we expected. It still feels like we got bonus money though, because we saved so much to pay taxes and didn't end up needing it.

Dropped two envelopes in the mail today, one with $1200 going to the feds and one with $450 going to the State of Oregon.

I expect thank you notes from Alaska, Mississippi and New Mexico.

Just got a K-1 that I was missing, slightly bigger loss than we estimated. Might reduce my check to the IRS futher. Good I guess?

Both the feds and the state of MI have accepted my MIL's e-filed returns. Still waiting for our personal return to arrive in the mail. It's going to be a nail-biter. Still no idea how much we'll owe for Q1 estimated taxes next Monday. It had better not be much because the tax account is depleted.

We finally signed the e-file authorization forms today and got our returns back. The result was much better than I expected: Our Q1 estimated payments are fully covered AND we get a few hundred dollars back to save toward our Q2 payments. After underwithholding in 2009 I overcompensated a little in 2010.

Now I need to hit the worksheet to recompute our estimated payments for the rest of this year. I think our 1099 income is going to come in substantially below my early guess, which would be good news tax-wise.

Because I didn't take taxes out of my 5 or so months of unemployment, sold some stock and worked november and december on contract, I wound up about $9K short. I had set it all aside, so it wasn't an issue, but then I got a message from the state yesterday that I owe them another $20 in penalty for not withholding at least 80% of my taxes.

Actually, I knew I had a penalty for the Feds, but that was paid in my return. Mass doesn't make it part of the return for some reason.

gbasden wrote: If I'm making over 6 figures a year and I'm paying less than 20% in Fed and State income taxes, it's awfully hard to argue that the upper middle class are hideously overburdened, much less the really wealthy. I'd love to see us get closer to traditional conservative tax rates like we had with Eisenhower.

So it's apples to apples, that would be on incomes above $2.8 million in today's dollars.

At the same time the -lowest- bracket was 20% and that was only to $4,000 (er $28,000).

I'd also guess the number of credits was far lower, though that would be difficult to research.



side note for economics geeks:

Statutory marginal tax rates are important for their symbolic
significance and incentive effects, but from an economic perspective, it is
just as important to determine the effective tax rate facing the rich. The
effective rate is the rate the rich pay after taking into account lower rates for
lower brackets of income and the available deductions, credits, and other
methods of narrowing the tax base (i.e., reducing the taxable income on
which the marginal rate is imposed). Brownlee helpfully provides estimates
of the historical effective rates for the richest one percent of households as
well. He indicates that effective rates during the high marginal rate years of
World War I reached 15.8%, and that during the high marginal rate years of
World War II they reached an astonishing 58.6% in 1944.
9
After the war,
while the top marginal rate remained extremely high at 91%, the effective
rate for the rich declined to 32.2% in 1952, then 24.6% in 1963, rising to
28.9% when Ronald Reagan took office and declining to 22.1% following
the 1986 tax reductions.
10
More recent estimates for the Clinton years are
not yet available. The conclusion drawn by Brownlee is that the rich can be
taxed at very high effective rates during times of national emergency, but
that at other times their political clout ensures that effective rates are much
lower than marginal rates.

noxiousdog wrote:I'd also guess the number of credits was far lower, though that would be difficult to research.

I can't help you with Eisenhower, but tax forms back to 1980 are available online from the IRS.

Thanks to Emancipation day in DC, taxes aren't due until the 18th.

Taxpayers will have until Monday, April 18 to file their 2010 tax returns and pay any tax due because Emancipation Day, a holiday observed in the District of Columbia, falls this year on Friday, April 15. By law, District of Columbia holidays impact tax deadlines in the same way that federal holidays do; therefore, all taxpayers will have three extra days to file this year. Taxpayers requesting an extension will have until Oct. 17 to file their 2010 tax returns.

Finally finished my taxes and ended up with 500 bucks after paying the crazy 90 bucks for turbotax. Asshats...

Octavious wrote:Finally finished my taxes and ended up with 500 bucks after paying the crazy 90 bucks for turbotax. Asshats...

$90? I think I payed $40-something for the super-deluxe whatever version at Costco...