The annual NYTimes section on taxes is now out

[LOL!]

The NYTimes published its annual section on income tax today. I have always found the articles useful including a filled out Form 1040 for a hypothetical couple.

An easy-to-read and useful article is about a topic we have discussed here: which asset classes to put in which accounts (taxable, tax-deferred, traditional IRA, Roth IRA) for the best tax result.

For those of you who use pencil and Excel to fill out your 1040, there are some deductions that you may miss because they are not on the tax forms because the forms were printed early before the laws changed. There's an article to remind you of these deductions.

Anyways, the section can be found here: http://www.nytimes.com/pages/busines...xes/index.html

[jazz4cash]

I am puzzled by the turbotax tax summary page "Effective Tax Rate" calculation.

AGI 144,267
Taxable Income 100,994
Total Tax 23,260
Effective Tax Rate 12.47%

In looking at my own turbotax 1040 summary, effective rate=Total tax/AGI, so that would be 16.12% in this example

[retire@40]

Originally Posted by jazz4cash

I am puzzled by the turbotax tax summary page "Effective Tax Rate" calculation.

AGI 144,267
Taxable Income 100,994
Total Tax 23,260
Effective Tax Rate 12.47%

In looking at my own turbotax 1040 summary, effective rate=Total tax/AGI, so that would be 16.12% in this example

Depends on what you look at. I define effective (or average) tax rate to be tax/taxable income. So in your case it would be 23260/100994 = 23%

[jazz4cash]

yeahbut, why would my turbotax make the calculation differently than the one in the example ? I have turbotax historical comparison and they all use AGI and tax liability. The figures I listed are not for me,,,,,,they are from the example in the link