Octopus Overlords

Coincidentally, I got my corporate returns today along with my K-1 income statement. That was the last missing piece of our income puzzle. Unless there are still any 1099s to straggle in, we should have all the paperwork now.

LordMortis wrote: I paid off my 2nd mortgage

There's your problem. Mortgage interest is good . Our mortgage has reached the point where we're paying almost as much principal as interest now. Fortunately home equity interest is another nice fat deduction.

Standard Deductions have increased to the point where unless you have what I would consider a large mortage, the mortgage deduction may not even be used. Standard deduction for a married filing joint is now $11,400.........

LordMortis wrote: I lead a simple life. An accountant would have to stretch the truth thinner than an Olsen Twin to get me money. I think about some times. But I'm just not that guy. Which is precisely why I'm not one of the people who walked away from their mortgage and am working hard to pay my responsible fixed rate 30 year mortgage out of having negative equity.

Not that responsibility isn't its own reward, but if you think credit is tight now, try in 4 years with a foreclosure under your belt.

You'd be surprised how many morally and legally kosher tools an accountant can use. I don't see how being responsible and paying your mortgage is mutually exclusive of utilizing an accountant. Somehow I've managed both. And if I don't have negative equity, it's only becuase I was the sucker of 10 years ago and put more than the minimum down when everyone was telling me how I could make money with an interest only loan.

Scuzz wrote:Standard Deductions have increased to the point where unless you have what I would consider a large mortage, the mortgage deduction may not even be used. Standard deduction for a married filing joint is now $11,400.........

When you're single, you don't have that concern!

Deducting mortgage interest, real estate taxes, car taxes, state income taxes...woot woot.

pr0ner wrote:

Scuzz wrote:Standard Deductions have increased to the point where unless you have what I would consider a large mortage, the mortgage deduction may not even be used. Standard deduction for a married filing joint is now $11,400.........

When you're single, you don't have that concern!

Deducting mortgage interest, real estate taxes, car taxes, state income taxes...woot woot.

That's the easy stuff. Home office and home business deductions are our biggest slush pile. That gets us WAAY past $11,400. You have to make home business income disappear to avoid the self-employment tax.

I need to get my stuff together soon. I'm not sure what to expect since it will be our first year filing as married. I always do my own, but my wife has hers done for her. I sense interesting times ahead.

mailed off my state taxes today, and as soon as I get back in my car, my check engine light comes on. On top of that, it looks like I'll be heading to the hospital tonight to meet my son for the first time. Great timing!

naednek wrote:mailed off my state taxes today

Mailed?

Paid my corporate excise and registration taxes today ($456 and $109 just for the privilege of being a corporation) and got my personal paper sorting/filing done. Paid the CPA his $550 fee for the company returns, too. I might start filling in his 50-page questionnaire tomorrow.

Kelric wrote:

naednek wrote:mailed off my state taxes today

Mailed?

They wanted $20to efile. Screw that

Got the news back from the accountant... $8359 federal return.

New house, new baby, two new cars, overwithholding. Whoopeee that will pay for almost 5 months of daycare.

Filled in 80% of the questionnaire and handed off to the wife for her share on 2/20. There it sits. She spends 95% of our money so she has 75% of our deductions.

This year we badly need the anticipated big refund, so I started nagging a week ago. There's a 50/50 chance she'll do her part before April, otherwise I'll take the automatic extension and nag continuously until September.

Started working on my taxes.

Eight hours later I realize that I should never move to a different state ever, except on New Years.

Just stick to states without income tax and you'll be fine.

naednek wrote:

Kelric wrote:

naednek wrote:mailed off my state taxes today

Mailed?

They wanted $20to efile. Screw that

Yeah, I did the same. Considering that Paterson is holding up our tax refunds until (at least) April 1st, it makes zero sense to spend even a penny to rush them down the Thruway in a big hurry. Actually, it makes zero sense to spend more than 44 cents, I suppose, since that's what I did.

Different thread...

The Meal wrote:I got handed the piece of paper with my bonus number written on it yesterday... It gets applied to tomorrow's paycheck, and after deductions, it should make that check look like a six-week payday. No complaints here. (Of course, it's pretty much earmarked for 2009's taxes...)

It covered 77% of my outstanding federal tax burden for the year. (Yes, I have made suitable changes to my withholding so that my 2010 taxes won't be so onerous.) No estimate, yet, on state taxes.

The Bride was supposed to finish her tax prep on Monday, and had just begun when I discovered our flooded cellar. So much for that. Now April 15 is looking doubtful.

Huzzah the making work pay tax credit. I would have owed some to state & federal but the credit saved me. Still have to pay the state but federal is giving me back more than I owe the state.

Got back a little bit (~$300) from the government this year. Last year paid just a tiny bit (~$50). Being single and renting makes taxes an easy exercise!

Just did ours with the accountant.

Ouch, did not bring adequate lubrication.

The wife is filling in her part of the questionnaire right now. She has an appointment with the CPA on Monday. We're going to beat the deadline this year!

I'm expecting a big federal refund. Our income plunged last year while I withheld aggressively in case it recovered. We should get back most of our quarterly estimated payments.

My wife withheld $42 last year.

I'm a little afraid to finish them up now.

Off to do mine now. I just hope the kids sleep for more than an hour.

Done - just have to print and file. Schedule K-1 is a PAIN and confusing to boot. I don't know how you do it Ironrod.

Fed and SC state e-filed. I have to mail in WI because I was a resident of SC for 10 days.

stessier wrote:Done - just have to print and file. Schedule K-1 is a PAIN and confusing to boot. I don't know how you do it Ironrod.

We pay an accountant. I don't understand K-1. Schedule SE is our Waterloo, though. We have to wipe out as much 1099 income as possible to avoid the self-employment tax. The Bride finished her SE data today and takes it to the accountant tomorrow. I hope that will be the end of it.

All bets are off if he needs to know the details of our health insurance payments. I can show our payment history easily enough, but I can't begin to explain it. First we paid full price for a couple of months, then the federal subsidy kicked in retroactively so we paid nothing for awhile, then we had a partially subsidized month and a couple of fully subsidized months, then the subsidy expired and we had to pay full price again, then we reduced our coverage to save money, then they renewed the subsidy retroactively again...there's no way I can attach numbers and dates to that mess. But I have a bad feeling he will insist on it even though the COBRA subsidy is not treated as income. It could set us back weeks if we have to get the COBRA administrator to cough up documents.

As much effort as we put into writing off our piddly little income, I can only imagine how hard it is for rich people.

Well, crap. Speaking of K-1s, I just got two K-1s and two K-1-Ps (state) that I thought were entities that merged with the other K-1 I filed.

Postmarked 3/23.

Hopefully the accountant hasn't filed yet. There are some losses on there that I think could reduce what I owe.

There's always the ability to file a revised return.

Isgrimnur wrote:There's always the ability to file a revised return.

I'd much prefer he just add them and file normally, but we'll see. Emailed him the PDFs.

WI return is mailed. Fed and SC returns have been accepted. Now I just have to sit back and wait for the money to start rolling in.

The K-1 I got was because of a stock I hold (KMP). My part of the company is 0.000007%! It actually throws off a nice dividend and has been going up in price, but I'm not sure it is worth filling out all that paperwork every year. And the K-1 always comes in March, so I can't do my taxes before that. Grrr.

Ironrod wrote:As much effort as we put into writing off our piddly little income, I can only imagine how hard it is for rich people.

The trick is to avoid self-employment income entirely, and move to tax-favored capital gains and qualfied dividend income. There are more complex strategies, but moving to inherently tax-favored income is easy.

It can be a very effective tax strategy to arrange things so the family patriarch/matriarch pays income taxes on the income/assets everyone else uses to survive.

Found out that our 2009 overpayment was not enough to cover the Q1 '10 estimated payments due next week. I was counting on a big refund; instead, I'll be mailing off checks again.

Given how erratic our income was last year, I should be happy that my estimated payments matched our actual tax bill within a few $hundreds. But I really thought that I'd overwithheld, and I had big plans for a nice windfall.

Oh well...at least we have finally dropped out of the 25% bracket.

Ironrod wrote:Found out that our 2009 overpayment was not enough to cover the Q1 '10 estimated payments due next week. I was counting on a big refund; instead, I'll be mailing off checks again.

Given how erratic our income was last year, I should be happy that my estimated payments matched our actual tax bill within a few $hundreds. But I really thought that I'd overwithheld, and I had big plans for a nice windfall.

Oh well...at least we have finally dropped out of the 25% bracket.

You need to acquire 2 kids - stat!

Just got our taxes done. Due to my new job last year we got bumped into another tax bracket which means our return is about half of what it was last year. That hurts inasmuch as we had to spend a fortune on a new heat pump and were hoping our return would cover a substantial chunk.

Next year should be better though; we'll be getting a tax credit for the heat pump and some other home efficiency improvements we made this year. We'll also be able to write off some for the robbery.

I my accountant. They do our monthly business filings and personal taxes yearly.

I was prepared to pay up big time this year because I didn't pay my monthly estimates (that went to hospital bills, etc), so I was pleasantly surprised to find out we were getting cash back. I guess, slightly down business income, medical bills, 2 months lost work, wife not working beyond Feb '09, and claiming 1 dependent pushed us into a nice category.

My tax return is going to pay for about half of my Disney trip next month which is sweet. I'm thinking it might be my last trip there as the price just keeps on going up and up and up. The price of tickets has pretty much doubled in 10 years.. Just the park tickets for the 3 of us is going to be 820 bucks for 6 days...

Done and done. I actually withheld too much and will get back about $12k.

Jaymann wrote:Done and done. I actually withheld too much and will get back about $12k.

On behalf of the American people, thank you for your generous, interest-free loan to the federal government. You are truly an American hero (or the result of the US educational system. Either works).

If you're going to get married mid-year, I recommend trying to avoid marrying someone who lived in another state, then moved to your state (of course), and works in yet another state. I'm glad my wife successfully lobbied to send everything to a pro. One federal and three different states, with a mishmash of payments and refunds. At least we're getting a net refund. Bleh.

Having never worked in a state with their own income tax, I would be hard pressed to be convinced to move to one now. Especially since Texas is apparently one of the lowest effective taxed states, ranked 48th above New Hampshire and South Dakota.