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Done your taxes yet, US-ians? Shocked yet?

 
 
 
Rhea

Rhea

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Doing my taxes. The GOP has managed to carve me out of their usual largesse. Usually they leave me alone because I'm "one of them," but the drastic changes to deductions are a hard hit this year with our tax bill increasing by $8K. Now, I would not be angry about this, if it means the taxes might have gotten more progressive, which I'm for.

BUT

  1. I don't think they did become more progressive, I think people making less than me are even harder hit, and
  2. I expect a whole slew of lawmakers are about to shit their pants when they realize we're taking the hit while the Trumps, the Issas, the Warners, the Pelosis and the Corkers, et al are raking up what we are paying instead of the poor getting it.


I expect a lot of discussion about the shift in the tax laws. And yes it does make me angry if I am paying more to the pockets of the ultra rich, rather than to support medicaid and SNAP.

I've hear there are instagram and twitter feeds for regular middle class Trump-supportin' people who are shocked and angry at the GOP and Trump as they put the final number on their form 1040-EZ
 
This year I will have some refund but it is less than what it was last year. I've heard a lot of griping about people not saving or getting back what they thought under Trump's tax plan. I wasn't surprised.
 
On behalf of those of us who are getting to take advantage of the 20% deduction in passthrough income (without having to do anything special to improve investment in labor or capital in exchange), allow me to thank y'all for the extra trillion and a half y'all are borrowing from China to make this possible....

OTOH the near-poverty line ($40K-ish) family of 5 whose taxes I did last week is getting a 10K refund, which I think is a bit higher than usual, probably due to the expanded chid tax credit...
 
I've simplified my financial life down to just trying to hang on to what I've got by keeping it in one of the local mattresses. Since then I've been relegated to the standard deduction for some years now and dutifully paid out my pound of flesh every April. My naive assumption is if they increased the standard deduction and I've made no changes, I should only owe half a pound of flesh. Right? Right? Yeah, we'll see.
I'm still not going to run the numbers until late March. I can see me sitting there at the end of my tax return staring at a big old red number with a perplexed look on my face.

But yeah, if I knew it was being used for healthcare, eldercare, education by an efficient government instead of making corporate life easy and heaping money on defense contractors who charge an arm and a leg (intended), I wouldn't mind. I wouldn't mind at all.
 
jonatha said:
OTOH the near-poverty line ($40K-ish) family of 5 whose taxes I did last week is getting a 10K refund, which I think is a bit higher than usual, probably due to the expanded chid tax credit...
Click to expand...

$40k is not near the "poverty line" which is actually $30k for a family of 5. And a $10k refund is 25% of their gross income. Basically, pretty much all their withholdings if not a little more, which would make their effective tax rate negative and make them belong to Romney's 47%. US tax system is way too generous toward people with (many) children. Federal exemptions and tax credits (as well as poverty rate calculations) should not be linear, as marginal costs of each child decrease with the number of children.
 
Derec said:
jonatha said:
OTOH the near-poverty line ($40K-ish) family of 5 whose taxes I did last week is getting a 10K refund, which I think is a bit higher than usual, probably due to the expanded chid tax credit...
Click to expand...

$40k is not near the "poverty line" which is actually $30k for a family of 5. And a $10k refund is 25% of their gross income. Basically, pretty much all their withholdings if not a little more, which would make their effective tax rate negative and make them belong to Romney's 47%. US tax system is way too generous toward people with (many) children. Federal exemptions and tax credits (as well as poverty rate calculations) should not be linear, as marginal costs of each child decrease with the number of children.
Click to expand...

It was less than $40K, but more than $30K. Might have been nearer to the latter.

25% gross withholding would be quite high, and in fact I think their total withholding was about $3K.

Their effective tax rate is certainly negative, thanks mainly to EITC.

"Federal exemptions" no longer exist.
 
Derec said:
jonatha said:
OTOH the near-poverty line ($40K-ish) family of 5 whose taxes I did last week is getting a 10K refund, which I think is a bit higher than usual, probably due to the expanded chid tax credit...
Click to expand...

$40k is not near the "poverty line" which is actually $30k for a family of 5. And a $10k refund is 25% of their gross income. Basically, pretty much all their withholdings if not a little more, which would make their effective tax rate negative and make them belong to Romney's 47%. US tax system is way too generous toward people with (many) children. Federal exemptions and tax credits (as well as poverty rate calculations) should not be linear, as marginal costs of each child decrease with the number of children.
Click to expand...
If the initial exemption came close to the MC of the first child, you'd have the start of a point. Since it doesn't, you don't.
 
2018 was a "high earning" year for us. We are paying about 32k less in taxes than we would have under Obama. I'd give that up and more, for a President who wasn't a sociopathic Russian tool bent on destroying this Country. In a heartbeat.
 
BH said:
This year I will have some refund but it is less than what it was last year. I've heard a lot of griping about people not saving or getting back what they thought under Trump's tax plan. I wasn't surprised.
Click to expand...

And I bet most of them don't know how to compare last year's tax to this year's.
 
Accounting for how much less was withheld from my paychecks, and my slightly lower return, my taxes went down overall about $1000. I'm single and don't own a home.
 
My refund is down a little, but so was my overall tax liability. The gains I've seen from the tax cut easily make me overlook the billions in stock buybacks by the corporations.

Oh wait... no it doesn't.
 
Rhea said:
Doing my taxes. The GOP has managed to carve me out of their usual largesse. Usually they leave me alone because I'm "one of them," but the drastic changes to deductions are a hard hit this year with our tax bill increasing by $8K. Now, I would not be angry about this, if it means the taxes might have gotten more progressive, which I'm for.

BUT

  1. I don't think they did become more progressive, I think people making less than me are even harder hit, and
  2. I expect a whole slew of lawmakers are about to shit their pants when they realize we're taking the hit while the Trumps, the Issas, the Warners, the Pelosis and the Corkers, et al are raking up what we are paying instead of the poor getting it.


I expect a lot of discussion about the shift in the tax laws. And yes it does make me angry if I am paying more to the pockets of the ultra rich, rather than to support medicaid and SNAP.

I've hear there are instagram and twitter feeds for regular middle class Trump-supportin' people who are shocked and angry at the GOP and Trump as they put the final number on their form 1040-EZ
Click to expand...

So I am shocked that no one else thought of this... I filed my taxes super-early this year... right at the beginning of the government shutdown. in fact, that is what prompted me to do an early submission. I submitted a 1040 and a schedule A. On my Schedule A, under "other" expenses, I put my entire income. On my 1040, I requested my entire W2 withholdings returned to me. On the Schedule A, I wrote, "No one is paying you to work right now, so why should your boss get paid"?

Totally worked. Got a huge check. paid no taxes last year.
 
For the first time in a while, I actually looked up the numbers (wife does the taxes and stuff, here).

I paid about 14,000 in taxes on my salary.
Paid about 2000 in taxes on my military retirement.
My military retirement take home was about 16000.

Two plus four, plus... carry the naught... Huh.

I appear to be pretty much running in place as far as taxes go. So I probably shouldn't bitch about my taxes going to any stupid wall.







But my WIFE'S taxes! SHE shouldn't be shelling out tax money for trips to El Paso to lie about how we need a wall that...
 
I was reading commentary that the Republicans could actually take some negative heat for the tax cut because Americans don't understand math. They think because their tax refund is lower, their taxes went up... not that their paycheck had less withheld. Interesting if ignorance ended up hurting the Republicans for a change.
 
Well, we learn math by rote. Anyone can multiply or divide or subtract, but figuring out which number in a story problem goes into which part of the equation is not covered nearly well enough.
 
A lot of people who previously depended on a huge SALT exemption will pay higher taxes. Others will get smaller refunds because the government has been taking out less taxes in the hope of not having to pay out large refunds, so people who liked getting a refund are getting much smaller ones, or in some cases, will owe money. They need to change their number of dependents to avoid this happening again next year.

We will have to pay a large capital gains tax due to the sale of our vacation home last year. Otherwise, since our primary source of income is SS, and a modest amount of interest and dividend income, we probably wouldn't have to pay any taxes this year. That would have been true with or without the tax reform. For those who don't know, a couple can make up to 32K in addition to their SS income, without having to pay any taxes on their SS income. We always wait until the last minute to do our taxes, especially this year since we will owe about 8K or so.

I read that over 80% of Americans did get a tax break, even if they don't realize it. But, if you live in New Jersey, California or any state that has high SALT rates, you're screwed, since the new rule only allows a total exemption of 10K, which is much lower than many pay in real estate taxes in NJ. For example, one of my sisters still lives in NJ and her SALT is well over 10K, so she will likely owe, unless she changed her exemptions to zero last year. I sometimes think this tax reform was aimed at several blue states, which have very high SALT.

Still, it's all very confusing for many people, so a lot of lower income people will probably think they didn't get any tax break when they may have gotten a small one.
 
I'd rather just fan the flames.

Trump promised to lower our taxes, but our refund checks are lower! He lied to us!!! We want our money back... and we want Mexico to pay for it!

USA! USA! USA!
 
I'm still waiting for a form from a stock sale that should be available this week, but judging from what I've heard from people in a similar situation (middle income, no dependents, few deductions except my mortgage) I will not be counting on a refund. Thanks Obama!
 
Jimmy Higgins said:
I was reading commentary that the Republicans could actually take some negative heat for the tax cut because Americans don't understand math. They think because their tax refund is lower, their taxes went up... not that their paycheck had less withheld. Interesting if ignorance ended up hurting the Republicans for a change.
Click to expand...

Quite a few Trumpsters are livid, and claim they won't vote for him again, for that exact reason: the government's been letting them keep more of their paycheck, which caused their refund to shrink. Even though their tax liability might actually be lower, they think they're being taxed more. Idiots.

And I agree with your other comment, that we should talk about "significant shrinkage" of refunds as often as possible.

I haven't done our taxes yet, but we were getting close to the break-even point with itemizing, due to the drop in mortgage interest as we get near the end of the loan. So swapping exemptions for a higher SD may benefit us. We also provided about 50% support for our son, so we're going to see if it works better with him as a dependent or having him file alone.
 
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