2019 (for 2018) Income Tax Thread

[phdhorn 6,225]

Big changes this year... tons and tons of people who have itemized might not now, standard deductions going WAY WAY up, more caps/penalties on itemized deductions.  For example the averages of our itemized deductions the last 4-5 years were about $20K, 2017 standard deduction was $12,700 (married/joint) - now the standard is $24K!  Obviously it paid to itemize; now, nope (Feds are trying to of course cut down on it and reduce tax fraud, good luck widdat).  Anyway, you can see where most of the country will probably just take the standard deduction. I know we will unless I find some flies in the shit when running an itemization.

Not sure what Turbo Tax to buy, since I'd almost certainly do the standard deduction now.  Seems like Basic will work.  However, I guess I have to do an itemized run just to compare.  Waste of $10 (diff. between Basic and Deluxe) to find out? Maybe.

Anyway, with the new year, let's get this shit going, questions, comments, whateverthefucks here. Oughta be a flying hoot. Yay Taxes!!

Edited January 3, 2019 by phdhorn

[WithoutAClue 16,013]

one thing to check is whether you had enough money withheld to cover your taxes.

I'm going to have to do a quarterly estimated tax payment on Jan 15 'cause I screwed up

and didn't change the amount withheld from my pay check when the new tax brackets/withholding

amounts went in to effect.

Uncle Sam doesn't like me writing a $3K check on April 15th...

[Reagan1k 3,042]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but as long as you met the "good-faith" threshold rules for withholding based on your prior year's tax bill, there should not be a penalty if you now owe on 4/15 for 2018.

Uncle Sam doesn't care unless you ratcheted your withholding down and rode the cash flow.

 Maybe I'm misunderstanding your situation, but owing on 4/15 isn't something that gets you penalized unless you withheld even less than your prior year's total.  If you withheld the same amount and made more or experienced a bracket shift - that's what you do on 4/15....write a check.

[horn4life 3,830]

5 hours ago, phdhorn said:

Big changes this year... tons and tons of people who have itemized might not now, standard deductions going WAY WAY up, more caps/penalties on itemized deductions.  For example the averages of our itemized deductions the last 4-5 years were about $20K, 2017 standard deduction was $12,700 (married/joint) - now the standard is $24K!  Obviously it paid to itemize; now, nope (Feds are trying to of course cut down on it and reduce tax fraud, good luck widdat).  Anyway, you can see where most of the country will probably just take the standard deduction. I know we will unless I find some flies in the shit when running an itemization.

Not sure what Turbo Tax to buy, since I'd almost certainly do the standard deduction now.  Seems like Basic will work.  However, I guess I have to do an itemized run just to compare.  Waste of $10 (diff. between Basic and Deluxe) to find out? Maybe.

Anyway, with the new year, let's get this shit going, questions, comments, whateverthefucks here. Oughta be a flying hoot. Yay Taxes!!

So you used to get a deduction of $20K itemized plus the $12,700 standard deduction for a total deduction of S32,700, and this year you get $24K!

Am I missing something? Or is the $20K heavy with mortgage interest you will still get to deduct?

[phdhorn 6,225]

Yes, you can't do both you either have to take the standard or you take an itemized deduction. It's either / or.

[WithoutAClue 16,013]

58 minutes ago, Reagan1k said:

Correct me if I'm wrong, but as long as you met the "good-faith" threshold rules for withholding based on your prior year's tax bill, there should not be a penalty if you now owe on 4/15 for 2018.

Uncle Sam doesn't care unless you ratcheted your withholding down and rode the cash flow.

 Maybe I'm misunderstanding your situation, but owing on 4/15 isn't something that gets you penalized unless you withheld even less than your prior year's total.  If you withheld the same amount and made more or experienced a bracket shift - that's what you do on 4/15....write a check.

they withheld less money (~3000) from my pay check this year compared to last year so i'm unlikely to meet the "good faith"  threshold.

the IRS finally have the 2018 forms up on the website so i'll be doing the first pass tax calculations this weekend. maybe it won't be as bad

as i expect but it will be close.

[XYZ 2,154]

Yeah, the 1040 form looks very different. The schedules are named differently.

[Reagan1k 3,042]

25 minutes ago, WithoutAClue said:

they withheld less money (~3000) from my pay check this year compared to last year so i'm unlikely to meet the "good faith"  threshold.

the IRS finally have the 2018 forms up on the website so i'll be doing the first pass tax calculations this weekend. maybe it won't be as bad

as i expect but it will be close.

Understood.  If you still withheld  90% or more of the tax due you should be OK, even if you withheld less than the prior year.

They're gonna get it one way or the other....that's for sure.

 

[52-80 19,374]

Hah!  Suckers!  I'm a sovereign citizen, beholden to no tax collections, which is unconstitutional anyway.

 

Am I under of arrest?  No?  Then feck off with yerself, bobbies

[horn4life 3,830]

The bigger standard deduction is a good thing for a lot of people, especially those without any employee business expenses.  I'm sure we well get fucked at least a little on unreimbursed expenses from the wife's side as a W2 Employee. But maybe not as SALT taxes are capped at $10,000 for sales and property taxes. Which I is just over my deduction last year. And with a lot of loan interest I think I am probably still gonna file in the itemized category. 

note-  If you took out a equity loan for home improvments after December 14, 2017. You can not deduct the mortgage on that loan any longer if Forbes is correct. I am guessing that is for a second?

I did not realize that you pay 0% on the first $78,750 married filing jointly for capital gains, before the 15% up to $488,850 for those married filing jointly. 

 

 

 

Edited January 3, 2019 by horn4life
remove political commentary on fica taxes

[MNLonghornFUKM 8,964]

Soo....do we file taxes to a govt that is shut down?

[pearlandhorn 3,343]

1 hour ago, MNLonghornFUKM said:

Soo....do we file taxes to a govt that is shut down?

Don't file.  Report back in September 2019.

[Al Czervik 1,259]

21 hours ago, horn4life said:

So you used to get a deduction of $20K itemized plus the $12,700 standard deduction for a total deduction of S32,700, and this year you get $24K!

Am I missing something? Or is the $20K heavy with mortgage interest you will still get to deduct?

I think you're missing something.  You don't get both. 

[BottleRocket 659]

We have 80/20 home loans.  Is it true that the interest on the smaller 2nd loan is no longer deductible?

[CO Horn 172]

The 80/20 still qualifies because the 20% was used for the home acquisition. 

[pacman 7,494]

18 hours ago, MNLonghornFUKM said:

Soo....do we file taxes to a govt that is shut down?

Yep, but if you are owed a refund, you will wait until the government reopens 

[tokamak 6,685]

I'm doing TurboTax piecemeal as I receive forms but I think I've got all the big stuff entered at this point. Just received a 1099-INT for a grand total of $10. When I entered it in, TurboTax raised my amount owed by over $50. WTF? Even if that $10 bumped us up to a higher bracket (don't think it does as far as I can tell), that doesn't seem possible. Any idea what could be going on here?

[tokamak 6,685]

1 hour ago, tokamak said:

I'm doing TurboTax piecemeal as I receive forms but I think I've got all the big stuff entered at this point. Just received a 1099-INT for a grand total of $10. When I entered it in, TurboTax raised my amount owed by over $50. WTF? Even if that $10 bumped us up to a higher bracket (don't think it does as far as I can tell), that doesn't seem possible. Any idea what could be going on here?

Nevermind, figured it out.

[RexWilson 1,499]

14 minutes ago, tokamak said:

Nevermind, figured it out.

And?

[tokamak 6,685]

3 hours ago, RexWilson said:

And?

That extra $10 of income bumped me over a limit for a completely unrelated credit that I was getting elsewhere. Unlucky.

 

TurboTax should have a feature that shows you how something affects other places on your return.

[texhorn 356]

Tuition and fees deduction gone this year. $9k paid in grad school tuition last year. FML

[CO Horn 172]

16 hours ago, texhorn said:

Tuition and fees deduction gone this year. $9k paid in grad school tuition last year. FML

There are still education credits (Lifetime Learning Credit).

[HRSchenker 2,333]

With the standard deduction for married couples going to $24k, I guess I'm SOL on writing off my home loan interest. Now I have more incentive to pay that damn thing down

[texhorn 356]

3 hours ago, CO Horn said:

There are still education credits (Lifetime Learning Credit).

 

Yeah, LLC is $200. Quite a difference compared to the tuition and fees deduction. 

 

[CO Horn 172]

37 minutes ago, texhorn said:

 

Yeah, LLC is $200. Quite a difference compared to the tuition and fees deduction. 

 

20% of qualified tuition and fees up to $10K, so not $200, $2000.

[Nolacycling 893]

Single teacher own nothing but a dog. I got a lower refund. I hate him. Trump that is.

 

Edited January 29, 2019 by Nolacycling

[HouTex 1,913]

20 minutes ago, Nolacycling said:

Single teacher own nothing but a dog. I got a lower refund. I hate him. Trump that is.

 

Most people at your apparent income level experienced a tax decrease.  The refund doesn't tell the whole story because your withholding might have been adjusted.  Need to look at the total tax paid.

[Nolacycling 893]

you're correct. either way it wasn't much of a difference.

[Sbbruin 22,090]

This is when being surly .000000001% really hurts.

[Brew 3,049]

3 hours ago, Sbbruin said:

This is when being surly .000000001% really hurts.

That percentage was well taken care of with the changes.

[texhorn 356]

 

6 hours ago, CO Horn said:

20% of qualified tuition and fees up to $10K, so not $200, $2000.

Yeah, but it's phased out if your combined AGI is above $112K (married) and is unavailable at $132K. Hence, $200, not $2000. 

[Okie State 3,888]

I'm waiting on one last form for some RSU's that I sold last year and I should be good. We came out ahead due to the increase in AGI phase out for the child credits.

Our home is relatively cheap so I'd time property tax payments to itemize every other year. The new standard deduction wipes out the need to do that anymore. In other words...not Surly 1%.

[Nice Guy Eddie 13,712]

14 hours ago, texhorn said:

 

Yeah, but it's phased out if your combined AGI is above $112K (married) and is unavailable at $132K. Hence, $200, not $2000. 

Yep.  Seems like the fed govt doesn't want to help someone with continuing education costs if you're already earning a good wage.  

[happyfunball 481]

Am I wrong to still be using tubrotax?

Sold and bought a house. Two W-2s, multiple 1099-int/div, but no obscure deductions/income. Single but turbotax shows me having almost $30k in deductions...

[HouTex 1,913]

25 minutes ago, happyfunball said:

Am I wrong to still be using tubrotax?

Sold and bought a house. Two W-2s, multiple 1099-int/div, but no obscure deductions/income. Single but turbotax shows me having almost $30k in deductions...

I don't think you are wrong.  Unless you made more than $500k (unless that too has changed) on the house, there are no tax consequences.  You might even be able to use the free online version.  I've been using the CD version for home & business for over 10 years.  Still does a good job.

Edit:  you are single, so the max gain is $250k

Edited February 1, 2019 by HouTex

[CO Horn 172]

30k in deductions for? Also, if you sold house for at least $250k, you should probably report and exclude the gain to avoid a potential IRS Notice. 

[Nice Guy Eddie 13,712]

15 hours ago, happyfunball said:

Am I wrong to still be using tubrotax?

Sold and bought a house. Two W-2s, multiple 1099-int/div, but no obscure deductions/income. Single but turbotax shows me having almost $30k in deductions...

I don’t think so even though I prefer taxact mainly because I’ve used them for several years in a row.

[Redneck Mutha 8,165]

On 1/29/2019 at 12:58 PM, HRSchenker said:

With the standard deduction for married couples going to $24k, I guess I'm SOL on writing off my home loan interest. Now I have more incentive to pay that damn thing down

Same boat.  I'm having almost weekly conversations with my wife about once she gets perm employed, we will start plowing a shitload into paying the mortgage down.  

Something I learned the hard way about the standard deduction increase was that it really screwed with the withholding tables.  Under-withholding caused us to go from normally getting back a couple thousand back each year, to owing a few thousand this year.  

The people most impacted are those middle class, dual wage earners, with no kids, who normally itemize.  4 for 4 for us.  Apparently, the IRS is looking to modify the tables early this year, but shame on me for not doing a quick back of the envelope estimation in early 2018 to figure out we should have been taking more out.  

[DaysOff 8,157]

This is when being surly .000000001% really hurts.

Has anyone normally hit by AMT done the maths yet? Since I live in a low SALT area I'm expecting no pain using just the standard deduction, but I'm getting mixed answers from peers across the country.

[CO Horn 172]

1 minute ago, DaysOff said:

On 1/29/2019 at 3:03 PM, Sbbruin said:

This is when being surly .000000001% really hurts.

Has anyone normally hit by AMT done the maths yet? Since I live in a low SALT area I'm expecting no pain using just the standard deduction, but I'm getting mixed answers from peers across the country.

The SALT limitation along with the increased phaseout of the AMT exemption means a large majority of the people previously subject to AMT no longer will be. 

[texhorn 356]

Same boat.  I'm having almost weekly conversations with my wife about once she gets perm employed, we will start plowing a shitload into paying the mortgage down.  
Something I learned the hard way about the standard deduction increase was that it really screwed with the withholding tables.  Under-withholding caused us to go from normally getting back a couple thousand back each year, to owing a few thousand this year.  
The people most impacted are those middle class, dual wage earners, with no kids, who normally itemize.  4 for 4 for us.  Apparently, the IRS is looking to modify the tables early this year, but shame on me for not doing a quick back of the envelope estimation in early 2018 to figure out we should have been taking more out.  

4 for 4 here too.

[phdhorn 6,225]

PSA:  Deluxe TurboTax(CD version)** is $20 off through tonight if you order online from Target, Best Buy, Amazon, etc. through midnight tonight.  That makes it about $29 (without state, $39 with state).  I try to order now when it first comes out, then wait a month or so to run the updates before doing taxes, once they clean up the shit that would cause you to spend 30 years in Federal-Pound-Me-In-The-Ass prison for tax fraud.

(** I only get the CD version, am leery about doing shit online, and don't want the "download version", just in case I want to check shit out later... perhaps one of these years I'll change as the CD becomes almost obsolete, but for now it's how I roll)

[Archer 474]

1 hour ago, Redneck Mutha said:

Same boat.  I'm having almost weekly conversations with my wife about once she gets perm employed, we will start plowing a shitload into paying the mortgage down.  

Something I learned the hard way about the standard deduction increase was that it really screwed with the withholding tables.  Under-withholding caused us to go from normally getting back a couple thousand back each year, to owing a few thousand this year.  

The people most impacted are those middle class, dual wage earners, with no kids, who normally itemize.  4 for 4 for us.  Apparently, the IRS is looking to modify the tables early this year, but shame on me for not doing a quick back of the envelope estimation in early 2018 to figure out we should have been taking more out.  

Got us too. 4/4

Last year our CPA ran our 2017 numbers using the 2018 brackets and said we’d see about a $10k drop. I’ve had that number in the back of my head all year and when I did my 80% rough TurboTax estimate a few weeks ago it looks like we might owe a couple Gs. 

[Okie State 3,888]

Without the change in the child tax credit, I think we would have ended up owing about $2K this year after losing the personal exemptions. Throw the peons a few grand and we'll keep producing future taxpayers. It's just good business.

[Nice Guy Eddie 13,712]

48 minutes ago, phdhorn said:

PSA:  Deluxe TurboTax(CD version)** is $20 off through tonight if you order online from Target, Best Buy, Amazon, etc. through midnight tonight.  That makes it about $29 (without state, $39 with state).  I try to order now when it first comes out, then wait a month or so to run the updates before doing taxes, once they clean up the shit that would cause you to spend 30 years in Federal-Pound-Me-In-The-Ass prison for tax fraud.

(** I only get the CD version, am leery about doing shit online, and don't want the "download version", just in case I want to check shit out later... perhaps one of these years I'll change as the CD becomes almost obsolete, but for now it's how I roll)

Make the switch to the online version.  Keep everything in the cloud.  I scan copies of my tax statements and keep a copy of my return PDF.  Don't keep any other file or paper doc.    And I don't really need to get the files since I can grab everything from TaxAct whenever I want.

[Guest]

10 hours ago, Redneck Mutha said:

Same boat.  I'm having almost weekly conversations with my wife about once she gets perm employed, we will start plowing a shitload into paying the mortgage down.  

Something I learned the hard way about the standard deduction increase was that it really screwed with the withholding tables.  Under-withholding caused us to go from normally getting back a couple thousand back each year, to owing a few thousand this year.  

The people most impacted are those middle class, dual wage earners, with no kids, who normally itemize.  4 for 4 for us.  Apparently, the IRS is looking to modify the tables early this year, but shame on me for not doing a quick back of the envelope estimation in early 2018 to figure out we should have been taking more out.  

Immediately in 2018 when everyone started hoo-hawing about less withholding and that alleged paycheck increase( shuffling deck chairs, but whatever...)  I increased my withholding by an extra $50 a paycheck.

I really, really try to get my payment/ refund in April as close to zero as possible.  Only one time have I ever had to pay like $2k over my withholding.  It fucked us up all year, so I said then that it would never happen again.

Looks like this year I overdid it a little and we're getting $2000 in refund, but with the way everyone was talking about it, I saw us getting set up to take it in the shorts, come tax day.

Fuck that.

[52-80 19,374]

Man.  My tax filer (wouldnt dignify calling them advisors) sucks.  Big 4 corporate fuckheads.  They just finished my 2017 filing...after endless delays.  And smacked me across the face with a big ass assessment.  I have no confidence they actually did it properly.  They certainly didn't do it in time.  Dont mind paying a big bill if i have confidence it was assessed properly, but i fucking dont

[happyfunball 481]

30k in deductions for? Also, if you sold house for at least $250k, you should probably report and exclude the gain to avoid a potential IRS Notice. 

 

House was way more than $250k but broke even so no gain as a result no tax impact.

 

Finished filing today as I had multiple employers. My effective rate went down from 22% to 17%.

 

This seems low to me, but I’m not complaining. All my deductions saved me.

 

I overpaid due to social security not hitting the cap as a result of employer switch early in the year.

[William_Cannon 86]

With the standard deduction for married couples going to $24k, I guess I'm SOL on writing off my home loan interest. Now I have more incentive to pay that damn thing down

... I highly recommend getting that mortgage monkey off your back. It’s a life changer, you’ll sleep better, better health, less stress, mo money, you’ll have the flexibility to take risks that you previously wouldn’t have.... can’t stress this enough...

[XYZ 2,154]

So what’s the point of listing a child in the “dependents” table if he/she is older than 17 and doesn’t qualify for the child tax credit?