281–290 of 319 posts
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If your tax situation doesn't change from year to year you don't need to scour the instructions. Just work through the forms using last year's return as a guide.
They changed form 1040 drastically a year or two ago. Plus tax law changes from year to year.
I am a chump who uses TurboTax every year. Having seen a few cases of the IRS going after someone I knew, I just pay the danegeld. Perhaps I do not need TurboTax, but I know that the laws at the state and federal level change every year and that I have no real ability to track any of this, but the penalties can be high for failure. I rarely understand tax jargon, in any case; I always feel like I am on the back foot…
Funny anecdote, I've been using TurboTax installable for a decade or so (having given up on doing them completely by hand). Been considering hiring a professional because you always hear that they are worth their weight in gold. (Our tax situation is not particularly complicated though, typical Silicon Valley married homeowners). Well, last year, did everything in turbotax, said we were short by like 15k. Believable,…
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what about state taxes? is there a state level Free File Fillable form?
Oregon is free to efile as well
I used the online form a couple years ago and the process was so annoying compared to freetaxusa that I will gladly pay the $12 to avoid dealing with the Oregon.gov site.
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> Loopholes are often deliberate ways of encouraging behavior with money. I don’t buy this. There is an easy way to encourage behavior with money. Give people money in exchange for the behavior. If the goal is to encourage someone to buy a house, then pay them to buy a house. The reason politicians don’t do this is because this lays bare all the costs associated with the incentive. Whereas with tax loopholes, they ca…
Two thoughts without getting into the morality or ethics of existing law: The legal standard for giving money is different than taking money. A tax incentive that is legal (i.e. mortgage interest deduction) would be illegal as a giveaway (giving money to only taxpayers with mortgages) as it would fail equal protection under the law. Second, often times tax incentives help avoid having the government use taxpayers as…
This is a good thing, exactly the type of corruption that needs to be eliminated.
>For example, if I take deductions for my dependents on my w-2, I have less money taken out of my paycheck. The other way around, no loopholes, would a) discourage having dependents
The other way around would be to pay you for having dependents. I do not see how that would discourage having dependents.
>and b) would force me to act as the bank for the government.
I do not understand what acting as a bank for the government means.
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Here in Sweden I go to the tax office website, log in, have a brief look at that all my salary has been correctly entered (I have yet to encounter that it hasn't) add if I possibly want to deduct some extra things (also very uncomplicated), go to file and click send (the whole thing can even be done on mobile) . The process typically takes 20min max, Australia was quite similar. I'm always amazed by tax systems which…
You don't have to file taxes in Germany except if you and your spouse are filing together or if you are self employed. Everything else is being handled by your employer. If you want to get some of your pre-paid taxes back, you will have to file but the tax office doesn't care if you don't.
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Having lived through my parents being audited multiple times I am definitely afraid of the IRS boogey man. Merely dealing with an audit (even if everything you id was correct and above board) can be extremely stressful and time consuming. My parents also thought their CPA was really good an knew what they were doing. Turns out that even CPAs screw up sometimes. :-)
I've dealt with the IRS. It was a major pain. Ridiculous pain. They were contesting some education credits some years after graduation. Showed proof of payments to the university, but they responded with "Well how do we know you were paying for education - you could have been paying for things like parking?" They kept saying "Send us this doc and you'll be good." We'd get the doc, send it to them, and they'd say it's…
I think that the most important thing to remember when dealing with any government or financial institution is to keep paper records of everything. For our education credit dispute, we had my wife's transcript and receipt for tuition paid in the tax folder; we sent that in and the matter was closed. Same goes for capital gains: it's really handy to have detailed records of the cost basis for anything you sell. Same goes for identity theft, bank fraud, stolen credit cards, contractors that don't do what you pay them to do, etc. Know what you have agreed to pay, keep a paper trail of it, hold up your end of the bargain, and then insist anyone you do business with hold up theirs.
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If your taxes are easy in Sweden / Australia they would be easy in the US.
All the Americans I know who have moved to Australia rave about how much easier their tax is here.
That's one of the things I never understood, the US is only country im aware of where you have to file if you're a citizen, even if you're a resident overseas.
This is a link to actual free turbotax and hr block: https://www.turbotaxsucksass.com/ It was on Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj
The most official site is https://www.irs.gov/filing/free-file-do-your-federal-taxes-f... . For some reason, the TurboTax version of FreeFile is now limited to below $33000 AGI. It wasn't last year. The FreeFile from other companies has the limit of $72000, which is what I thought the law said it has to be. I am not sure how that is possible, but I'm sure it took some extensive lawyering and lobbying by Intuit.
Perhaps the agreement is that only some software provider has to be available, not necessarily every software provider.
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Two thoughts without getting into the morality or ethics of existing law: The legal standard for giving money is different than taking money. A tax incentive that is legal (i.e. mortgage interest deduction) would be illegal as a giveaway (giving money to only taxpayers with mortgages) as it would fail equal protection under the law. Second, often times tax incentives help avoid having the government use taxpayers as…
> A tax incentive that is legal (i.e. mortgage interest deduction) would be illegal as a giveaway (giving money to only taxpayers with mortgages) as it would fail equal protection under the law. This is a good thing, exactly the type of corruption that needs to be eliminated. >For example, if I take deductions for my dependents on my w-2, I have less money taken out of my paycheck. The other way around, no loopholes,…
I'm not sure this is corruption. Encouraging people to buy a home instead of rent is largely viewed as a positive thing. Helping people afford to have kids is a good thing. Encouraging people to favor green energy is a good thing. Encouraging people to buy a giant SUV like we did in the 90s and 00s? Not as good.
"I do not understand what acting as a bank for the government means."
I would pay more in tax (no deduction) and have to wait for the government to pay me for the kids. They would be taking a loan out of every paycheck. Incidentally, the current income tax system where employers withhold and you get a refund for overpayment is a form of banking on taxpayers. Allowing people with dependents to declare them and reduce the amount withheld is very helpful to lots of not-so-wealthy people's personal cash flow.