So, have you filed your taxes yet? I haven't!
If you're in the same boat, well, good news! I have one code guaranteeing a lucky winner free access to TaxCut Premium + E-file to give away.
To enter, write me a haiku about taxes in the comments and pick a number between 1 and 50. I'll use a random number generator to pick a winner on Monday.
P.S.: the haiku is optional. But preferred! But optional.
Showing posts with label taxes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label taxes. Show all posts
Thursday, April 03, 2008
Tax Cut Giveaway: A Balm for Tax Procrastinators
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
Boo, Taxes!
I am totally going to owe the IRS money. I got my W-2 today and immediately entered it and my ING 1099 into the same free e-file site I used last year. Looks like I'm going to owe the federal government $116 and NY State $28. And I haven't even entered my Bank of America 1099 yet! It's not a lot, but I'd still rather owe nothing, for obvious reasons. Thankfully, I wasn't counting on a refund, and kind of had a hunch this might happen, and if I have to raid my savings to pay my taxes, that's what I have to do. I should probably consider adjusting my witholding for this year, since I'm going to (hopefully) have the $1500 of extra income above and beyond my W-2.
I'm almost wondering if it's worth trying to itemize in order to make it come out even. Medical, state & local taxes, and charitable donations almost might squeak past the standard deduction...but is it really work $200 to try to add up all that stuff?
Friday, July 27, 2007
Freelance Income Follow-Up
So much like in my last post, all the good advice I received here ended up being moot—my employer added my freelance income to my regular paycheck and withheld 401(k) contribution and taxes from it. I guess I'm glad to have the extra 401(k) contribution, but to see my $335-ish check dwindle to $205 (for a month and a half's work) is a little...well, pathetic. It's enough to make a girl want to pad her invoice!
And doesn't that withholding seem a little excessive? If you subtract the 401(k) (less than $25), it ends up looking like I'm in a 33+% tax bracket, which, I assure you, I am not. Maybe they're doing this to cover the self-employment tax? Or maybe I'm just going to get a big fat tax refund...which is fine, I mean, I'm not opposed to that (interest-free loan blah blah notwithstanding) but I do actually need the money to cover my grad school applications, so I'm sort of thinking of taking an extra exemption.
Anyway, I'm opening an Electric Orange checking account for this money, which seems the best of both worlds—interest and easy access. I don't want to have to scoot this money around too much (it's too slow and annoying), and since I know I'm going to be spending it, it seems expedient to slap it into an account with a debit card, so I can charge related expenses directly to it. I've already spent $140 of the $200 on the GRE registration fee, anyway.
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
Freelance Income and Taxes
So, I'm shortly to get my first check for freelance work. It's going to be in the neighborhood of $350. As I've mentioned, I'm earmarking the money from this job to pay for my grad school application process, but what do I do about taxes? I've done a little light research, but most of the stuff I've found seems to be targeted towards people like K, who are full-time independent contractors, not people who have W-2 jobs but earn side income on a a freelance basis. Do I need to do quarterly estimated payments? Will I need to pay the self-employment tax? Should I bother setting aside money for taxes, or should I just assume that because the amounts are small, my W-2 withholding will cover my entire tax bill?
I know lots of my readers have additional freelance income. Any resources you can point out or personal experience you can share would be greatly appreciated.
Thursday, March 22, 2007
Joint Life, Separate Taxes
I live with my boyfriend. We live our lives together in a lot of ways, and a lot of our choices affect each other. Our lives are merged financially to some extent: we have to coordinate to write the rent checks. He pays the bills for electricity and internet service; I pay the Netflix bill; we have to check in regularly and make sure everyone (including our third roommate) is paying his or her fair share. We go grocery shopping together, but also seperately; we take taxis together; we go to the movies together; all these things have financial ramifications and require us to work out a sort of policy on our financial interactions.
But this is one I don't think I'd anticipated: taxes. We file separately, of course, but while my taxes are easy-peasy (one W-2, a couple of 1099s, free e-file, done), K's taxes are a huge pain in the ass. He's a freelancer, and so he's got way more paperwork than I do, an entirely different vocabulary in which to discuss his finances (technically, he's a "sole proprietorship"), the self-employment tax, quarterly estimates, and the absence of witholding to deal with. Complicated. Also—let us be frank—he is just less organized than I am about these sorts of things.
So, while I'd filed my taxes and received my return by the beginning of February, K has yet to begin working on his. For probably a month and a half, I have been bugging him about this, making myself a nuisance with my anxiety.
I'm fully aware that I've been being intrusive, and I hate bugging him, but his inaction on stuff like this just brings up this tremendous, inchaote fear in me. I'm afraid that he will miss the filing deadline, and afraid that he will end up owing the government $10,000 that he doesn't have. It's some big, instinctive, disorder thing. It wigs me out.
Well, thanks to the kind help of another New York freelancer, I found an accountant who could help, and she and K have an appointment tomorrow, and I get to sigh a big sigh of relief. After I sigh the big sigh of relief, though, I have to consider whether I'd be so freaked out about the filing thing if we didn't live together—how much more intertwined does it make our lives feel? I'm thinking kind of a lot.
And I guess it's real that money is a big part of a relationship when you start living your lives together. You have to be able to set and pusue goals together, and make joint decisions without killing each other, and that kind of thing. But because we're not married, or planning to get married, it's a different deal—there's a sense that we're separate in our finances because we're separate in our lives, regardless of the fact that we buy groceries and housewares together and cook together and share chores and all the rest of it. I don't feel like it's okay for me to ask him to change the way he conducts his financial life unless it actively affects me (i.e., the fact that he hadn't done his taxes was going to give me a heart attack)—and because our futures are so up in the air, I can't really say that his future affects me.
It's an odd position to be in. I really don't have any conclusions about it—I'm just thinking out loud—but it's interesting that it manifests itself in money, that you can see it there.
Monday, February 12, 2007
Refund Madness
My federal and state refunds hit my ING account this weekend. The federal government forked over the expected $430, but New York State adjusted the $270 calculated by the program I used to e-file to $90. It's kind of disappointing, but there's not much I can do about it (and hey, $520 may not be $700, but it's still $520) so I won't be banging my head against that particular wall. Anyway, this brings the balance of my Mini-E ING account to $722.32. Given the current lack of slack in my budget, I'll be sticking with the existing automated transaction (a meager $50 per month) for the next couple of pay periods, until I can boost the balance to the $1,000 goal. Then I'll begin piling up the last thousand dollars for my 2007 Roth contribution.
Three cheers for e-filing and direct deposit.
Monday, February 05, 2007
Friday, January 26, 2007
The IRS Man Goeth
Despite being confused, intimidated, and totally clueless, I sat down (okay, flung myself across my bed with my laptop) to do my taxes last night.
I discovered that, like a lot of financial tasks that come bundled with scary baggage, it's actually not all that hard. The only way in which my parents claiming me as a dependent affected the return is that it made me automatically ineligible for the Earned Income Credit (for which I believe I am ineligible anyway) and meant that I couldn't claim education expenses (which I couldn't have done anyway: my parents paid them). As HC very helpfully commented, I still qualified for the standard deduction on the basis of earned income. There were some complications because I spent half the year as a student (in a place that's not here) and half the year (less, actually) as a full-time employee, but the complications only involved frustration, not financial ruin.
The bottom line is that I filed for free without having to do any math and now I get money back (kind of a lot, actually: $701, total). And it's done. And I'm relieved. The real bottom line is that I, like, I think, many others, build things up in my head to be harder and scarier than they are, and just doing them often reveals that they are no big deal.
Thursday, January 25, 2007
The IRS Man Cometh
I got my W-2 today. I have no idea what to do with it.
I'm ashamed to admit it, but I've never filed taxes myself before. My parents have filed for me on the assets in my name (which I guess means there are some--I think I'm a listed beneficiary on the trust that contains my grandfather's paintings) and claimed me as a dependent. Apparently, they can claim me as a dependent for this year, too, because I was a full-time student through May, with all of the tuition bills that full-time studenthood [at a small private college] entails.
I want to do a free e-file, but I am up against the barricade of not knowing how to start figuring out what to do about being a dependent versus filing independently, et cetera, et cetera.
But I promise you this: if I get a tax refund, it's going right into my Mini-E.
Thursday, January 11, 2007
Tax Savings
I got my first paycheck of the year today, which means it's my first paycheck adjusted for flexible spending and 401(k) witholdings.
Previously, my take-home pay was $889. Now, after witholding $80 (7%) for my 401(k) contribution and $35 for my travel FSA, it's coming in at $806. That's $115 on which I don't pay taxes, and thus, about $20 in taxes saved every two weeks, for a projected yearly savings of $520. Not bad. I'll take it.
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