Tax-time surprise

[chanaleh]

Holy crap... by my calculations, I actually get a $181 refund from the Feds. (And have to pay the State $11. Usually it's the other way around.)

This is oh so much better than the several hundred bucks I had to pony up a few years ago (the first year I did Schedules C/SE, I guess; whoopee for freelance work). I seriously adjusted my withholding after that. I know, free loans to Uncle Sam, yadda yadda... but the 78 cents I would have made in interest on this amount is oh so worth the peace of mind I feel right now.

I went right ahead and wrote checks to my favorite charities, for almost the entire total. What the hell, they've been waiting for it from me for months. :-)

Bed now. Pizza tomorrow. Baruch ha-Shem.

Comments

[surrealestate.livejournal.com]

Yay for refunds. :) Making a habit of donating the refund is a wonderful idea, too. I usually do a bunch of donations about once a year, and then at tax time (when itemizing), invariably (not matter the total) feel guilty about not having given more.

(FWIW, I usually owe the state and have to pay the feds because the latter allow many more deductions.)

[alaria-lyon.livejournal.com]

I think it's normal to pay the state and get a refund from the federal unless you rent - then you're likely to get a MA refund. But MA does not deduct charitable contributions, or the clean fuel, or as much of education costs. So our refund is huge from the federal while we're still paying MA $250.

[msmidge.livejournal.com]

This is my first year to have to fill in the freelancer schedules and I am so confused. All the online tax preparation programs seem to muck it up somehow. After spending hours on this, I'm ready to just do it all by hand, which is probably easier...except my darn dialup connection is too poky to download the forms and our darn post office doesn't have them. Any, actually. I was shocked.

[navrins]

I went to Stop n Shop on my way home.

The bread aisle is stuffed.

Guess they know who's coming tonight. :-)