Octopus Overlords

Pad! (Post 1000 in the thread, had to do it.)

I am going to start on taxes tomorrow. Really. I am. No, really.

Hmm it's March, I guess it's time to get our papers together and send them off to the accountant.

I just upped my 401k allotment by a percent so hopefully that will offset me owing again next year. Not that I owed a lot, I just like receiving money instead. But not the multi-K amounts that some people get, that's just crazy. I'd be happiest if the numbers worked out to 0 every year.

I wonder if the payroll withholding calculations will reduce withholding based on the pre-tax deduction. I am not sure if they do anything "intelligent" there.

coopasonic wrote:I wonder if the payroll withholding calculations will reduce withholding based on the pre-tax deduction. I am not sure if they do anything "intelligent" there.

I don't expect they will do anything that fancy. Although we just (well, "just 8 mos ago") switched to Workforce, so who knows?

Done. $2k from the Feds and $1,500 from the state. A little smaller than prior years, but less of a free loan to the IRS.

Finished. Kind of disappointed in the refund. I bought a house last year and everyone says I would get a much bigger return. Was not as much as I thought it would be.

The first pass is done. I looked closely at my scottrade report and this time I can seen SPY hasn't put its 4th Q dividends in, so I'll wait to change my Scottrade stuff. I'm glad I did the once over. It took me two hours to fill out Schedule K1 crap in Turbo Tax for FGP LLC and I'm not entirely sure I did it right. For their discounted rate of $100+ for that one Schedule K. I'm tempted to start seeing a tax preparation specialist. I think in 2018, I'm going to price one out. How do you shop for a tax guy? How much is a tax guy for someone who has a W2, 2 investment sheets of paper, and a bank account to declare with not deductions?

Never invest a token amount of money in an LLC. I'd get out but I'm down so much that I hate to "write it off" at this point, when at least I'm still getting reduced dividends. Though now the reduced dividends are going to be about the cost of increasing to Turbo Tax Premier so that I can declare them.

Anyhoo, maxing my 401k and declaring 0 has made the difference again this year. I should have another grand to put toward my next car when I get my amended Scottrade 1099.

I finally started filling in the CPA's questionnaire last week and got 75% done. Will finish that this week and hand off to Wife, who will undoubtedly sit on her part of it for 2-3 weeks. Then it will go to the CPA too late to make the April deadline and we'll need the automatic extension. Probably have a verdict by early to mid May.

I really don't know what to expect. Hoping it's near break-even since Wife had very little 1099 income last year. One of her teaching gigs underwithheld and the other one didn't withhold federal taxes at all, and I didn't make any quarterly estimated payments, but both of our businesses should generate healthy enough losses to offset that. My best guess says we'll have to pay out a few hundred bucks.

LordMortis wrote:The first pass is done. I looked closely at my scottrade report and this time I can seen SPY hasn't put its 4th Q dividends in, so I'll wait to change my Scottrade stuff. I'm glad I did the once over. It took me two hours to fill out Schedule K1 crap in Turbo Tax for FGP LLC and I'm not entirely sure I did it right. For their discounted rate of $100+ for that one Schedule K. I'm tempted to start seeing a tax preparation specialist. I think in 2018, I'm going to price one out. How do you shop for a tax guy? How much is a tax guy for someone who has a W2, 2 investment sheets of paper, and a bank account to declare with not deductions?

Never invest a token amount of money in an LLC. I'd get out but I'm down so much that I hate to "write it off" at this point, when at least I'm still getting reduced dividends. Though now the reduced dividends are going to be about the cost of increasing to Turbo Tax Premier so that I can declare them.

Anyhoo, maxing my 401k and declaring 0 has made the difference again this year. I should have another grand to put toward my next car when I get my amended Scottrade 1099.

K-1's really aren't that difficult to fill out. Just put the numbers in the correct boxes in Turbo Tax and you're done.

pr0ner wrote:

LordMortis wrote:The first pass is done. I looked closely at my scottrade report and this time I can seen SPY hasn't put its 4th Q dividends in, so I'll wait to change my Scottrade stuff. I'm glad I did the once over. It took me two hours to fill out Schedule K1 crap in Turbo Tax for FGP LLC and I'm not entirely sure I did it right. For their discounted rate of $100+ for that one Schedule K. I'm tempted to start seeing a tax preparation specialist. I think in 2018, I'm going to price one out. How do you shop for a tax guy? How much is a tax guy for someone who has a W2, 2 investment sheets of paper, and a bank account to declare with not deductions?

Never invest a token amount of money in an LLC. I'd get out but I'm down so much that I hate to "write it off" at this point, when at least I'm still getting reduced dividends. Though now the reduced dividends are going to be about the cost of increasing to Turbo Tax Premier so that I can declare them.

Anyhoo, maxing my 401k and declaring 0 has made the difference again this year. I should have another grand to put toward my next car when I get my amended Scottrade 1099.

K-1's really aren't that difficult to fill out. Just put the numbers in the correct boxes in Turbo Tax and you're done.

It was that way last year (except the boxes in the 1065 were a little different word wise than what TT demanded and it made me fill out the exact same info twice from the same 1065, once for rental income and once business income) but this year, it went in to some sort of long loss carry over mechanism with some fort of AMT thing and then again to examine $4 worth of taxes that were paid to Puerto Rico that somehow figure in to my taxes, none of the information it asked for had anything corresponding in my forms. When I get my updated 1099 from Scottrade, I'm going to have spend more time looking at the actual forms it fills out on my behalf and try to figure out if I clicked on something incorrectly that sent me down a rabbit hole of technical incorrectly.

Annual fisting is now ready -- we owe the feds $2500 but the State of NJ is actually sending me a check for $19. Last year we owed the IRS about $4K so I'm happy to owe them less this year...I guess. F-taxes.

W-4 Line 6:

Additional amount, if any, you want withheld from each paycheck

Wouldn't havin ~$100 per check withheld before you get it be a much easier pill to swallow than having to cut that check every year?

Probably, yes. However, the general problem is my salary. For the last two years (with my new a-hole boss) it has been highly variable because he randomly adds or removes me from the schedule. We're still tweaking the wife's withholding to try and make a best guess, but honestly since I went back to work 8 years ago we haven't received a return at all. I'm sure there are people out there questioning why I work at all as apparently it might be more advantageous from a tax perspective to have me sit around and eat bon-bons all day.

My modified 1099s came in today. So I should probably go home and modify and file today while I can still get "the discounted" Turbo Tax rate. Inertia is a huge force as the only thing holding me back from abandoning TT is me. We'll see how I feel tonight with a fresh look at the K1 schedule AMT foreign tax nightmare Q&A I was trying to work out last time.

Perfect example of why I'm ready to leave TT

Form 1116 (COPY 1) -- Explanation Stm: Detailed Explanation-1 must be completed. Enter your explanation here to complete the required statement. It must show the allocable expense items for line 2 column a.

And there are no other references. I must fill this out but I don't know form 1116 (Copy 1) links to. I don't know what line 2 comumn a is in reference to. And My only interaction is to put something in the blank or not continue.

coopasonic wrote:Hmm it's March, I guess it's time to get our papers together and send them off to the accountant.

Papers came back from the accountant.

The good: $8500 back
The bad: You have to realize a lot of losses to get that much back. We always over-withhold, but generally to the tune of around $3k. 2016 was a pretty good year for most everyone investment-wise.
The ugly: The investment accounts with the losses are the ones protected by the pre-nup (so I technically have no say in how they are invested). This is one way to convert them to community funds.

Grrrrrrrr

$1,270 back from feds, $65 back from the state.

This is using 0 dependents on my W-2. Not sure how some of you guys are getting such a large amount back from the state, unless your states are just holding back more?

Anyway, filed early February, got the fed refund exactly one week later, the state got back a few weeks later. Record-setting speed from the fed this year!

I had planned to pay myself $100 per month from the total to help with bills for the next year. That was my BIG PLAN. As of now, it's all gone. I can assure you that it didn't go to anything stupid, and I'm not sure where it all went, but I did spend it.

I remember now. I paid down a credit card.

I finished my part of the tax prep a couple of weeks ago and dropped it in Wife's lap, where it still sits. We'll end up filing for an extension, as usual. One of her teaching jobs didn't withhold federal taxes so I'm now expecting to owe a few hundred bucks plus some token interest for filing late.

I dragged my feet because I knew I'd owe but finally got everything together and filed today. The fisting was not especially awful at about -$1000 but the total damage over time is *INFURIATING*. In actual taxes paid we essentially use up my wife's entire salary. Just the fucking taxes. Not the non-property tax portion of the house payment. Or living expenses. Just the goddamn unreasonable taxes. That is between NJ, NY, and Federal taxes.

If I factored in gas, high sales tax, and commuting costs I expect that her salary is completely eaten up. It has only intensified my urge to pack up and get out of here. The NE can go suck balls. Nice place to live in a way but more than offset by a completely corrupt Government culture that has caused all costs and fiscal sense to fly out the window to drain our pockets. And everything is beginning to fall apart. I can't wait to get out of here. I can pretty much work anywhere and she would probably not need to even work in a more reasonable place.

mori wrote:Finished. Kind of disappointed in the refund. I bought a house last year and everyone says I would get a much bigger return. Was not as much as I thought it would be.

The standard deduction has really gone up the last several years so you need a pretty good size schedule A (big house payment) to cover that deduction.

CPA emailed to say he's racing to finish ours this weekend. Dunno if he'll make it or not. Thanks to Patriots Day he has until Tuesday.

I still hope to be within a couple hundred bucks of break-even, one way or the other. I just hope we don't owe enough to require making quarterly estimated payments again.

I'll finish the pain train this weekend. Since I owe an asston, I'm not exactly dying to do it any faster.

malchior wrote:Just the goddamn unreasonable taxes. That is between NJ, NY, and Federal taxes.

We live in the same state, I don't understand. We paid about $15k in taxes to NJ and the Feds. Like, I'd rather have that in my pockets, but the burden is not crushing. Not in the way $10,000 in property taxes feels crushing.

RunningMn9 wrote:

malchior wrote:Just the goddamn unreasonable taxes. That is between NJ, NY, and Federal taxes.

We live in the same state, I don't understand. We paid about $15k in taxes to NJ and the Feds. Like, I'd rather have that in my pockets, but the burden is not crushing. Not in the way $10,000 in property taxes feels crushing.

Between Feds, NJ and NY we paid almost $37K. With the property taxes it was $50K this year. NJ practically doesn't have any deductions and caps out the property tax at $10K. I'm at the point where I can't justify it anymore - we don't have children. So at some point where I appreciate we need educated kids - it is unrealistic to expect people like us to continue to pay it instead of just leaving. Which we will.

I had one line on my state taxes that meant I had to mail them in rather than submit online. I did that five weeks ago, but I have NO IDEA if the state got my returns since they don't have any info available until 'six to eight weeks' after. So I won't know if they got my paperwork until after the deadline to file the paperwork. Awesome.

malchior wrote:Between Feds, NJ and NY we paid almost $37K. With the property taxes it was $50K this year. NJ practically doesn't have any deductions and caps out the property tax at $10K. I'm at the point where I can't justify it anymore - we don't have children. So at some point where I appreciate we need educated kids - it is unrealistic to expect people like us to continue to pay it instead of just leaving. Which we will.

That is utter insanity. What am I doing right that my tax bill to NJ is only like $3000?

If my kids are cutting my tax bill from $37K to $15K, I should be way nicer to them!

Now maybe you understand why I was sent a letter from the IRS after I graduated college for incorrectly affirming no one could claim me as a dependent. My dad was still trying to get those sweet, sweet tax deductions as long as he could.

I was bitter for quite a while in not getting the tax stimulus because my parents were still claiming me.

RunningMn9 wrote: That is utter insanity. What am I doing right that my tax bill to NJ is only like $3000?

Sometimes things are really weird. My tax bill to the Feds was right at $3000.

Smoove_B wrote:My dad was still trying to get those sweet, sweet tax deductions as long as he could.

Of course he was.

Smoove_B wrote:Annual fisting is now ready -- we owe the feds $2500 but the State of NJ is actually sending me a check for $19. Last year we owed the IRS about $4K so I'm happy to owe them less this year...I guess. F-taxes.

6.5k to the feds (on top of the usual payroll payments), 2.5k (add'l) to the great state. Aux income wasn't as hot as last year, but didn't have as many medical expenses this year either. $17 underpayment fees to both.

Finished late last night...needing serious coffee this morning. $5500 refund from Brother Jonathon. $1500 from state.


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They must have changed the tax laws somewhere down the line, because I'm not getting nearly the refund I used to. Only reason I'm getting even a pittance back is because of the money I've been paying for my eldest to go to college. Well, I guess you should alway shoot for nearly break even, right?

That's the idea, and I fail miserably at even getting close year after year.

Dropped my checks in the mail last week. Big one to Uncle Sam. Not much to the bankrupt state.

Weird year but I expected to pay a lot and had an account just for tax money. And the wife didn't send any quarterlies so I had to pony up for her too. Plus dropped $4k last month for first half of property tax. Fug.

Who else wants a piece?

I'll take a check. 10% of the fed's amount seems reasonable.