What Did you Learn From Doing Your 2009 Taxes?

[HsiaoChu]

I re-discovered that I have absolutely no idea how the IRS calculates any of its arcane rules. BY rights, I should have owed them about $1500 due to some capital gains taxes. But the H&R block program assured me that the Feds actually owed me. After you took in those special right to work credits and other credits, I didn't owe them anything.

But the state tax people recognized right away that my capital gains tax was extra income that I'd not paid taxes on, and assessed me for the money. It was a wash between the refund and the increased state taxes.

H&R Block generates so many forum(18) for the feds I'm sure they'll just pass it on.

Z

 

[tjon72]

Those #%&^**#$ revised 1099's just keep coming !

 

[Helen]

I learned not to mail the State forms to the Feds. Now I don't know whether to send the real set of Fed forms to the Feds or wait for them to tell me I didn't include all the forms. Luckily I hadn't mailed in my State forms yet, so I will get them the correct set of forms.

And I thought I was so organized...

 

[HsiaoChu]

One year I failed to send in my w-2 forms. Made no difference at all, they didn't care. I guess they just looked them up or believed what I wrote. I got my refund like clockwork anyhow.

One nice thing about these HNR block type programs is that its really hard to cheat, and most people just fill in the blanks of what the program asks for because the code is too complicated. I had 18 pages of documents to send in with my return.

And I will never ever file electronically until the require it no matter what.

 

[Martha]

OK, I blasted back north in time to get my taxes done.

I learned that the tax rate on recapture of depreciation is not taxed at the typical higher rate for property which you also occupy as a home. This reduced my liability for federal income taxes below what my guess was. Very interesting.

I knew that forgiveness of indebtedness income (which I have from a real estate LLC where the mortgage was renegotiated) can be delayed for five years and then spread out over five years for federal income taxes, but must be taken in the year it occurred for Minnesota income taxes. As a result, I paid almost twice the amount in state income taxes than I did in federal taxes this year.

Blech. Where is the teaparty? Just kidding. Really.

 

[DeborahB]

I have been trying to predict my taxes for 2010 and the H&R Block at Home program wants to know what's in box xxx on form xxx that I don't have! Driving me nuts. I'm retiring in July so I kind of need to have an idea of what counts where and then there are those lovely estimated taxes.... based on what...

For whoever said they did them on paper - LOL! That's why I pay the $ for the program every year. I usually wait until they offer Norton AV free with it, or something like that.

I should start a new thread - how do you estimate taxes when you worked part of the year and converted an IRA to a ROTH...

Answers welcome here...

 

[JustCurious]

One year I failed to send in my w-2 forms. Made no difference at all, they didn't care. I guess they just looked them up or believed what I wrote. I got my refund like clockwork anyhow.

When you file electronically, it is not possible to send in the w-2 forms. Instead, you enter the information from your w-2 form, and the tax software creates an electronic version of the w-2 form with the information that you provided.

 

[audreyh1]

Well, so far I have learned that you can eFile for an extension!

That's handy!

Audrey

Well we did it. We used the Free File Fillable Forms site.

It was a wee bit more involved than expected as I had to download some Microsoft plug-in in order to do it from Safari on my Mac and there was quite a bit to fill out. Also, you had to know your AGI from last year AND the PINs that were used to e-File last year. But it worked (except for printing) and we got an email acknowledgement of acceptance within 24 hours.

I did the Method#2 here How to E-File Your Federal Tax Extension Online For Free [2009/2010] » My Money Blog

Audrey

 

[donheff]

I have been trying to predict my taxes for 2010 and the H&R Block at Home program wants to know what's in box xxx on form xxx that I don't have! Driving me nuts. I'm retiring in July so I kind of need to have an idea of what counts where and then there are those lovely estimated taxes.... based on what...

I should start a new thread - how do you estimate taxes when you worked part of the year and converted an IRA to a ROTH...

Answers welcome here...

I did the same think. Luckily I had all the forms I needed from this year so all I did is alter the amounts. If you will be engaged in new activities with new forms next year, that can be quite a research process.

 

[Steve O]

I learned how to do a schedule C and a 1040X

I think the 16th amendment should be scrapped...

Flat tax with no deductions or exceptions for anyone or any company...

No more IRA's or 401K's ect...

No penaltys except for late payments...

No estimated quarterly taxes...

No taxes on capital gains, dividends, interest, estates ect...

One page tax code...

 

[JohnDoe]

I learned how to do a schedule C and a 1040X

Me too. Also that turbo tax doesn't handle it very well when changing state as well.

 

[Martha]

I learned how to do a schedule C and a 1040X

I think the 16th amendment should be scrapped...

Flat tax with no deductions or exceptions for anyone or any company...

No more IRA's or 401K's ect...

No penaltys except for late payments...

No estimated quarterly taxes...

No taxes on capital gains, dividends, interest, estates ect...

One page tax code...

Sounds real fair. A person with 10,000 in income from work and no other resources pays a tax. A person with a million dollar capital gain and 250,000 in dividends and interest pays nothing.

Schedule C is profit and loss from a business. A business will have income and expenses. Would you pay tax on the entire income, ignoring the expense? Not very fair or practical. What if you had a big contract and it paid your business a million dollars but your profit was $10,000. Maybe that is acceptable profit margin in your business. Tax the whole million? Compare that situation to the company down the street in a different line of work which sells its product for a million dollars and makes a half a million. Tax it the same?


Hope you are just venting.

 

[SecondCor521]

I learned how to file the new (well new to me, anyways) 1040X form. Not as bad as the last time I had to use it. As a result I learned viscerally the difference between my combined effective tax rate (~6%) and my combined marginal rate (32.8%). Add in SS/Medicare and that last dollar is looking at ~40%. Ouch.

I also realized that if I keep my current job, I will approximately spend in income+SS+MC taxes this year what I would spend on my entire retirement budget when FI. This is both cool and sad.

2Cor521