Octopus Overlords

Broke down lazy and did TT. I didn't even have enough going on to Itemize and it cost me $80. I owe $1500. <blech> to the whole thing.

I did it! I just e-filed my taxes.

I handed the package off to the wife today. She intends to have at it next weekend and mail it to the CPA by March 1.

The deal we have is, I buy TurboTax Deluxe, give it to the girlfriend, she does the taxes for both of us. She does mine free because I bought the software for both of us. Fair deal, I figure. Then, I take her someplace nice for supper to make sure I'm compensating her enough.

This year went especially well. She filed mine on 2/13. I got my refund in my bank account on 2/20.

Normally, she waits until March because she's busy with other things until then, but this year she got right to it.

Yay! It's all over for another year. I'm so relieved.

I have no idea why I get so tense about it every year. She does all the work, my taxes are fairly simple, and I get a refund every year. And yet I worry about it.

Our taxes are always a crapshoot. I make the minimum quarterly estimated payments as defined by our previous year's return (this is why we need a CPA). I also track our actual income each quarter. If I think we owe more than the defined minimum, I pay it into savings. At the end of the year I'm never sure whether I'll have to send in that money or get to keep it. Our vacation plans depend on how that turns out.

This year I've got $1200 riding on the outcome. If we owe much more than that we don't get a vacation; if we owe less we do. If we get a refund we get two vacations.

From my sister in law...

If you let your 6-year-old shred all your discarded documents, you should keep an eye on your 3-year-old as he dumps the tax docs in the back of the bag. And she shreds them all.
Looooooong day

...and the Taxman cometh. We owe the Feds like $2200 and the People's Republic of NJ like $300. No, I'm not amused.

I just found out we have the final tax form I was waiting for - it was in the mail pile that I thought was sorted but instead was added to during my business trip. Now I know what I'm doing this weekend.

Does Turbo Tax let you file state yet? And can I still get the $25 off coupon?

Finished, and I did get a federal tax return, nothing major but I didn't owe money.

I did end up owing 25 bucks to the state of Ohio, but that is pretty easy to take care of.

stessier wrote:Does Turbo Tax let you file state yet? And can I still get the $25 off coupon?

Yes and this link has a $20/25 discount structure.

Wife still hasn't finished her pass. I am beginning to think we're going to need an extension again this year.

Filed on Sunday. Got $1300 back from the Feds but owed the State $750. This was a weird year with the wife being in school full time, cashing out some of my father's old accounts, etc. 2015 will be a whole new ballgame with potentially a new house (more interest to deduct!) and definitely a new baby and the wife not really working AT ALL....

Kelric wrote:... 2015 will be a whole new ballgame with potentially a new house (more interest to deduct!) and definitely a new baby...

Jesus Christ, Kelric, I've lost track of you, or lost track of time, or something.
There was a time that I could not even imagine you ever typing those words.
Congrats, sir, on everything!

Giles Habibula wrote:

Kelric wrote:... 2015 will be a whole new ballgame with potentially a new house (more interest to deduct!) and definitely a new baby...

Jesus Christ, Kelric, I've lost track of you, or lost track of time, or something.
There was a time that I could not even imagine you ever typing those words.
Congrats, sir, on everything!

Our baby is all grown up.

Finished. Almost even between fed (refund) & state (owe) as usual.

I try to keep Fed at zero, but that all depends on my big city money dividends and stocks and pork bellies.

Once I get my mortgage paid off I may not even qualify for itemized deductions anymore. That will probably suck and make me owe Fed too. Not Mr. Fed. though. Nor Mr. Ed. He dead, as is Zed.

killbot737 wrote:Once I get my mortgage paid off I may not even qualify for itemized deductions anymore. That will probably suck and make me owe Fed too. Not Mr. Fed. though. Nor Mr. Ed. He dead, as is Zed.

I lost my itemization before my mortgage was paid off. I never even got close to $6500 in itemized deductions. I think my last morgage deduction was $750 of that $6500. And so, another for TurboTax... Your taxes are simple, we'll do them for free. No wait. You have one investment that requires you to fill in these 18 boxes. That will be $89 (discounted rate) please.

I don't even get $89 in return on my investment, bastards.

And yet. I'm lazy. They count on me and lazy.

LordMortis wrote:

killbot737 wrote:Once I get my mortgage paid off I may not even qualify for itemized deductions anymore. That will probably suck and make me owe Fed too. Not Mr. Fed. though. Nor Mr. Ed. He dead, as is Zed.

I lost my itemization before my mortgage was paid off. I never even got close to $6500 in itemized deductions. I think my last morgage deduction was $750 of that $6500. And so, another for TurboTax... Your taxes are simple, we'll do them for free. No wait. You have one investment that requires you to fill in these 18 boxes. That will be $89 (discounted rate) please.

I don't even get $89 in return on my investment, bastards.

And yet. I'm lazy. They count on me and lazy.

move to taxact.com - it's FREE

hitbyambulance wrote:move to taxact.com - it's FREE

I checked that out two years ago - not user friendly if you are used to Turbo Tax.

Got a phone interview set up with a CPA on Monday to go over my tax situation for this year. Whee.

LordMortis wrote:

killbot737 wrote:Once I get my mortgage paid off I may not even qualify for itemized deductions anymore. That will probably suck and make me owe Fed too. Not Mr. Fed. though. Nor Mr. Ed. He dead, as is Zed.

I lost my itemization before my mortgage was paid off. I never even got close to $6500 in itemized deductions. I think my last morgage deduction was $750 of that $6500. And so, another for TurboTax... Your taxes are simple, we'll do them for free. No wait. You have one investment that requires you to fill in these 18 boxes. That will be $89 (discounted rate) please.

I don't even get $89 in return on my investment, bastards.

And yet. I'm lazy. They count on me and lazy.

Due to the changes Turbotax made this year, I ran into that problem for the first time ever. My wife and I had liquidated some of our mutual funds last year to buy a car, so we had investment income that required us to move from TurboTax deluxe to TurboTax premiere. For $0. Two clicks later and I was all upgraded. Then I went to do some of my business expenses for my "writer" business (which dwindled down to practically nothing last year due to not actually writing anything) and was told I had to upgrade to Home & Business... for $0. Two more clicks and I'm all upgraded again. I decided not to bother with business deductions after all as they weren't going to amount to anything, so I was sure glad I didn't pay for the upgrade.

My only real complaints - other than having to do taxes at all, dammit - was that a) figuring out the numbers for our Health Savings Account/High Deductible Health Plan was a lot harder than it seemed like it should have been and I'm still not 100% positive we did it right (but we used numbers off the forms we'd received from our health insurance company, so I plan to blame them if anything is amiss) and b) I apparently mis-entered a number from my wife's W-2, and ended up with about $67 in state-taxable income, when it should have been a five-figure number. Somehow, despite "checking for errors" multiple times, Turbotax got ALL THE WAY to the part where it says "Click submit to efile your tax return. You can't stop it once it starts - it's just liek dropping it in the mailbox." I clicked submit and THEN it tells me there's something wrong with that W-2. Nothing like waiting till the last minute, right Turbotax?? That was a little disconcerting.

But really this was the first year in 15+ years that I can remember having any real issues with TurboTax, and ultimately they were fairly minor as far as I can tell. I still think we need a reformed tax code that eliminates most of the work in filing, and/or require congress to do their own taxes by hand.

Uploaded my company file and mailed our personal tax packet to our CPA last Tuesday. He promptly filed for extensions. Somehow I forget every year that business returns are due on 3/15, not 4/15. It's a struggle to pay off the Commonwealth by March, but I got it in just under the wire by carrying a balance on my credit card. That's gonna cost me.

I expect to owe the feds about $1,000 and owe the state a couple of hundred bucks on our household return, and I have that much socked away to cover it. Guess I'll find out how close I was in May.

And I agree with Odin: Our tax code needs to be swept away and recreated from whole cloth so that ordinary people can understand it and comply without hiring professional help. Not that the professions involved would stand for that...too many factions with too many vested interests.

Done! Between state and fed getting about $5,300 back.

Taxes shouldn't be difficult but they are because Congress makes all sorts of exceptions for the vested interests and campaign pledges -- adding new deductions, favoring certain types of income, allowing tax deferral and then adding all sorts of conditions because they've gone too far. I have no confidence the Republicans would act in a principled manner to give up tax preferences for lower rates and a broader tax base, while the Democrats have learned that Republicans are much less likely to eliminate a tax cut/rebate than a government program.

The government can motivate actions two ways: rewards or the threat of punishment. Both of these can be financial in nature, and often are.

An elimination of incentives and subsidies means that the government can no longer foster people and businesses to take the positive actions that the government wishes.

Whether or not what the government is fostering what they should be is another matter entirely.

Yep. The tax code isn't complex without reason. I finished filling out my wife's S Corporation return and the fee is $13 -- only had to complete 6 lines and the information sections on the Illinois return because her business is too simple to qualify for any of the special incentives/modifications.

Isgrimnur wrote:
An elimination of incentives and subsidies means that the government can no longer foster people and businesses to take the positive actions that the government wishes.

That doesn't have to be done through the tax system, although we're all conditioned to think that's normal, if not inevitable. Raising revenue, which is the tax code's real purpose, would be more efficient if it were simple and transparent.

Dont get me wrong: I'm not against social engineering. I'd just rather see it done in a manner that doesn't require me to pay someone $400 a year to produce a 50-page booklet laying out every detail of our little household economy.

Then what do you do to replace the tax preparation jobs that just evaporated?

Frank Underwood has a plan.

Kraken -- You wouldn't need the $400 booklet without that business. Spending the money for tax purposes to get good business books is annoying but necessary, like going to the dentist.

Did mine this weekend using TurboTax. It was relatively painless. It took me about 2.5 hours and my wife about an hour (to use ItsDeductible to enter all the donations). Also, it took me about an hour to figure out how to get my W2 out of the automated system. That's on me, though, and I didn't count it in my time.

We finished ours last week, and are getting a ridiculous refund (~$13K) after paying about $2K last year. One big difference was that my wife didn't work much last year, and she was always paid pre-tax for her consulting work. I'd tweak my withholding, but the hope is that my wife can find the time to pick up some more work this year, and I don't want to get stuck with a huge bill next year. Another big difference is that the $27K conversion we did to our minivan to make it wheelchair accessible is deductible as a medical expense. Another big difference is we have two more dependents this year.

stessier wrote:Did mine this weekend using TurboTax. It was relatively painless. It took me about 2.5 hours and my wife about an hour (to use ItsDeductible to enter all the donations). Also, it took me about an hour to figure out how to get my W2 out of the automated system. That's on me, though, and I didn't count it in my time.

How much of that 2.5 hours was KMP time??

pr0ner wrote:

stessier wrote:Did mine this weekend using TurboTax. It was relatively painless. It took me about 2.5 hours and my wife about an hour (to use ItsDeductible to enter all the donations). Also, it took me about an hour to figure out how to get my W2 out of the automated system. That's on me, though, and I didn't count it in my time.

How much of that 2.5 hours was KMP time??

30 minutes-ish. I could have totally done it wrong, however. I use Scottrade so most of the info of the sale/transfer was auto dumped into TurboTax through that download. The rest seemed to be pretty straightforward K-1 stuff (an oxymoron if ever there was one). But again, could have messed it up. I had such a tiny position, though, that it would have just barely paid for the accountant to do it for me.

What was your big concern around it compared to a normal stock?

stessier wrote:

pr0ner wrote:

stessier wrote:Did mine this weekend using TurboTax. It was relatively painless. It took me about 2.5 hours and my wife about an hour (to use ItsDeductible to enter all the donations). Also, it took me about an hour to figure out how to get my W2 out of the automated system. That's on me, though, and I didn't count it in my time.

How much of that 2.5 hours was KMP time??

30 minutes-ish. I could have totally done it wrong, however. I use Scottrade so most of the info of the sale/transfer was auto dumped into TurboTax through that download. The rest seemed to be pretty straightforward K-1 stuff (an oxymoron if ever there was one). But again, could have messed it up. I had such a tiny position, though, that it would have just barely paid for the accountant to do it for me.

What was your big concern around it compared to a normal stock?

The fact that I had a bunch of dividend reinvestments to sort through on the sales worksheet. Plus I didn't want to double count the info (have it taxed as cap gains and regular income by mistake) or do something else to possibly trigger an IRS audit.

Zarathud wrote:Kraken -- You wouldn't need the $400 booklet without that business. Spending the money for tax purposes to get good business books is annoying but necessary, like going to the dentist.

$400 is just for our personal return (which includes my wife's freelance business). My business return is another $500 by itself.

She only had four 1099s last year and might have as few as zero this year. Last year our itemized deductions were barely more than the standard deduction...although making the 1099 income go away to save the SE tax is the main objective, and that's tricky. I'm going to start doing it myself if the 1099 income peters out.

Did the accountant today. Good news, the wife's consulting business is going well. Bad news, it means an extra $4K or so that I have to send to the Feds.

I don't know how self-employed employees do it. Taxes are stupid on that stuff.

LawBeefaroni wrote:Did the accountant today. Good news, the wife's consulting business is going well. Bad news, it means an extra $4K or so that I have to send to the Feds.

I don't know how self-employed employees do it. Taxes are stupid on that stuff.

I take 25% off the top of my wife's freelance checks and salt it away for taxes, and we steer every possible deduction toward reducing that income. 20% federal and 5% state works out just about right.

Zaxxon wrote:Frank Underwood has a plan.

You are entitled to nothing!

LawBeefaroni wrote:Did the accountant today.

Does that help with the fees?

Zaxxon wrote:

LawBeefaroni wrote:Did the accountant today.

Does that help with the fees?

No, but at least it means that the government isn't the only one doing the f&$king.