Taxes!

I'm told that the loan for the house I'm buying is structured in such a way that I can deduct the entirety of my mortgage payments. Something smells very Fat Tony about it, but if true I'm really looking forward to that.

I'm trying to get it done by Tuesday so I can just go to my accountant's and be like, "here's the stuff, it's done, go to it." Then I get to watch my hard-earned checking account drain away. Sigh. It'll be worth it to have it behind me, though.

Nothing was taken from that relatively small amount of profit, but I assume it will absolutely drain any chance I have at a refund. (The last few years have been just under $1K.)

I can't see how I can possibly owe you two grand. I'm sure there are people who make twice as much as me who don't owe fuck.

I r queen of last minute taxes.

suckahs :-P

xpost

anyway, you wind up owing money this way:

if you're married, and you mark "married filing jointly" on your withholding forms at work, they withhold LESS money from your check than they would if you marked "single." this is because the tax system (wrongly, in almost all cases) assumes that if you're married and filing jointly, you're supporting your wife. If both people are working, you have to go through the two-earner, two job worksheet to find out what the difference is b/w what they'll withhold and how much taxes you will actually owe. This is almost always short though for some reason. (note: this is all only true for Federal. State, which is what I owe, doesn't bother to give you a nice worksheet to figure this out. They just say "fuck you", give you no tools to find out how much you owe, and then charge you when you're short. This is called "California is broke and squeezing you for money, bitches.").

If your income fluctuates from month to month because of overtime or bonuses or something, then God help you.

Being married sucks for taxes because of this, and also, this: say you make 70k. Say your spouse make 40k. If you're single, you pay the tax rate for someone making 70k, and your spouse would pay the rate for someone making 40k. But if you're married, you pay the rate for ONE income making 110k. Which is a higher percentage than the others. This means you pay more taxes when you're married than single people making the same money. This is called the marriage penalty and everyone thinks that they got rid of it last year. They did, but only for very low income people. The rest of the country (ie: the middle class) gets fucked.

I seriously doubt that, T … re audit

Though I totally understand the anxiety… I remember when I got cited for having “borrowed” registration tags on my car and I had convinced myself that I was going to be sentenced to jail or picking up garbage on the freeway in a yellow vest … I ended up with a $250 fine and that’s it

My tax preparer is a Republican (they're hard to avoid around here), and we've tacitly agreed to avoid politics when I meet with him every year. I asked him if there were any tax credits for our new heat pump, and got in a dig at red states that dragged their feet about implementation of the Inflation Reduction Act, hoping for a Trump win so they wouldn't have to do anything at all. He sent me an info sheet with a list of tax credits, seemingly not specifically tied to the IRA, and said I'd qualify for the $600 for a new AC. I said "what about the $2K further down the page that specifically refers to heat pumps?" He said "oh gosh you're right!" I think I need a new tax person.

I don’t use ILX to solicit clients but if you want to DM me about it…

Huzzah. (Everything is ready, I just need one more form, and it sure would be nice to get that one more form, he said generally to the universe.)

Man there’s stuff I don’t get until well into February

Thought the bump would be with the deadline looming here in the UK.

Balls

The Doge kids approved my refund, so that’s one less thing to worry about.

Gotta pay the man this year. (Last year was weird income-wise and I misunderestimated my estimated payments.) Wonder what happens if I don't ...

jk jk but for real who will even notice?

I've wondered that myself. I decided last year to stop claiming a business loss on my old freelance work in 2025, but I think I could go along for a few more years with doge's blessing.

i’ve had a refund in the mail to me for about a month now.

not looking forward to this

Having to tell people they owe money to corrupt fascists is unpleasant.

Olson discussed the impact of the cuts during a March 24 appearance on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal, where she said that between layoffs and buyouts, up to 50% of the IRS’s staff could eventually be cut. She explained that taxpayers must work with the IRS well beyond tax season and that the staffing cuts will make it difficult to get through to anyone on the phone to resolve their problems or have their correspondence processed in a timely manner. With the IRS’s move toward automation, more taxpayers will receive automatic notices but won’t be able to contact a person working for the agency to resolve them, she said.

Wonder what happens if I don't ...

jk jk but for real who will even notice?

― paper plans (tipsy mothra), Wednesday, April 2, 2025 2:45 PM (yesterday)

i had a tax mishap w/ an old account over covid where my payment wasn't sent and honestly nothing really happens you just get a letter one day saying you owe money from an old return

There’s stuff that’s automated like if what they have on file indicates that you owe but you haven’t paid… so they will notice, because it’s easy to automate… there are other things that automation doesn’t catch and can go unnoticed/unenforced …

Basically you get a letter saying you owe … then, if you don’t pay, you get another letter… they add penalties and interest… if you still don’t pay (or amend the return), you will get a letter saying they are imposing a lien. If you are due a refund in a future year, they will likely take it to pay the balance due. They can also garnish wages, and levy bank accounts…

Your refund was mailed on March 07, 2025. For information about how to file a claim because you have not received your refund check, please read the information below.

If you did not receive a check, or it was lost, stolen, or destroyed, you may file a claim if you know your current address.

fml

Oh no

No direct deposit for you?

I don’t have a US bank account. tbf the letter is being mailed internationally but even so..

We had some useless accountants do our taxes a couple years ago and for whatever reason they had our refund mailed to us instead of direct depositing it. Some dummy intercepted the letter from IRS, endorsed the check IN HIS OWN NAME, and we had to jump through all sorts of hoops to get the IRS to send us a replacement. It was a huge refund too!

Did they have your bank info? Did you specifically request direct deposit? … Not to get into the minutiae of tax software defaults and legal requirements for the practice … but, in general, clients tend to assume accountants have psychic powers and access to special databases that they absolutely do not.

They had it direct deposited to us the year before! And they didn’t even ask our preference the year this happened. We fired them and I just do my own taxes now.

But you just assumed that it would be the same? … Dude … no. Maybe they sucked in other ways, but confirming check vs direct deposit is your responsibility as the client.

OK

Like imagine if you changed banks at some point in the past year and they just had the refund direct deposited to the same account? … You would probably have ended up getting a check tbh.