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I use Turbo Tax (neither endorsing it or railing against it), and I usually by this time have a pretty good idea of what my taxes will be. Being retired and no longer being an earner from employer or own business, my returns are rather simple. So other than waiting to see any gains/losses in taxable accounts I pretty much have it down. I always since being retired set a fixed amount I take from my social security, and pensions, and MRD withdrawals to cover federal taxes with a little buffer so I get something back (didn't want to get into situation where I owed enough at end of year to have to start filing quarterly taxes which used to be a pain).
My end of year looks remarkably rather unchanged (only slight increase in refund), but still waiting for taxable account results which will likely only bring it down further. IF so, the Trump "tax cut" for me has been pretty much not much of anything.
Wondering how it looks for the rest of you.
I have seen some wild claims of what others think they are going to get back extra on other political blogs and either they are ignorant, lying, or have some strange circumstance that is rewarding them greatly.
Meanwhile business (my last years I was a business owner) have benefited greatly from Trump's plan. Too bad I am still not in that arena. The sad thing is that the cuts have increased our Nation Deficit by another $1 Trillion which we and our kids will have to figure out how to pay back. And the other sad this is that business in general was doing well without the cuts.
Thoughts about your results thus far ??
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You beat me to it.
I downloaded Turbotax over the weekend and started my return.
I noticed that I am taxed at a lower rate, but,,,,,,,,,,,,,
My mortgage interest, property taxes, state and local SALT deductions are all capped. (I'm in a higher tax state)
Anyway, my income was within a few thousand dollars of what it was in 2017.
And, so were my taxes.
Much ado about nothing.
Hey, but at least the corporations got a huge tax cut.
Last edited by Goose (1/29/2019 1:06 pm)
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I am one of the last of the Mohicans a.k.a. Luddites a.k.a. paper filers.
Now that the partial government shutdown has ended I'll stop by the IRS office to see if they have paper forms. If not I'll pay Lloyd Smucker's Red Lion office a visit.
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I got smacked pretty hard, but that's probably due to fact that I had a good year selling paintings. It's hard for me to predict tax stuff because I can't predict the sale of my artwork from year to year.
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Over the weekend I attended a meeting of a non-profit (501.c.7) and discovered one of the darkest aspects of the 2017 tax code revision: A real smackdown on non-profits' endowments.
Interest earned on endowments is classified by the IRS as "Unrelated Income".
Prior to the revision it was taxed at 15%...bad enough.
Now it is being taxed at 21%
That is a FORTY PERCENT increase.
OUCH!
Pretty hard to grow an endowment fund...much less use its earnings as income...when it is subjected to confiscatory taxation.