Taxes Q

YellowSnow said:

Christ almighty

RatherBeBrewing said:

FireCohen said:

creepycoug said:

FireCohen said:

creepycoug said:

FireCohen said:

What kind of withholding do you guys elect? Idk if messed up or something, was doing my taxes this year and owe over $9k in fed.

@YellowSnow can you move to @creepycoug board. Picked the wrong bored

I'm not the head of the Tax Bros here; but I do my own taxes so there's that.

There's no "fuck up". You just withheld too little relative to write-offs (Kramer) and deductions and you owed the Gov. more $$ during the year than was withheld. You'll pay a penalty.

I fuck this up all the tim. As long as you're not egregious it's not a big deal. Paying quarterly is a pain in the ass.

Interesting, my employer does the withholding. I checked and I got no deductions so I was little surprised to see this bs, but I guess it had to do with tax laws changed that took place and they don’t withheld as much as they used to. I rather that gets spread out over 24 pay stubs than in one check

You control your withholding amount vis a vis Form W-4. Claim zero deductions if you're single w/o no kids or otherwise have any dependents and you should be good ... they'll withhold the max.

That said, one of the Tax Bros. should weigh in on how they withhold on incentive comp. It's usually never enough so you have to pay. That's where most W-2 employees get an unpleasant surprise.

I'm not a tax advisor btw. When in doubt, hire one.

Thanks for clearing it up. I did not have issue with how much I owned. I was just pissed at my employer for withholding so little, but to your point the incentive piece is the kicker. I got promoted (I know....shocking) which led to my incentive comp doubling vs prior year. This makes much more sense to me now. Thanks creep

As Creep said you control withholding with a W-4. You want extra cash now and then a balloon payment at tax time? You can do that, and you did. Most people prefer the safer option and getting a refund. Personally, I like being as close as possible despite wanting to hold on to my money a few extra months.

You also mentioned incentives. Bonuses, PTO that’s paid out, etc are taxed at a higher rate.

I remember being a youngin’ and getting my first big bonus. Changed my W-4 the following week. If your company is cool they’ll code bonuses as something else, but the bigger the company the less likely they’ll do that because someone has a bonus budget and a base payroll budget to meet in order to get their own bonus.

For next year consider charity donations. Give to the Merkin Fund, a noble cause for the alopecia community, instead of Uncle Sam. Or throw more money into your retirement/mortgage/pre-pay property tax. If you can do itemized a real accountant is worth it, because I’ve known an HR Block or some tax filers seasonal workers - she and I would go on a weekend crack bender and then she’d go to doing people’s taxes lazily. I’m not saying that she’s indicative of all of their seasonal staff, but I wouldn’t risk it. She was actually talented; just not at seasonal tax preparing. I’ve never seen someone be so efficient at loading a crack pipe, cooling it off, loading it again, and all while giving road head. I’ve never met someone like that since, partially because I no longer smoke crack and the road head lost its luster after my gf hit the transmission into neutral while I was driving 80MPH on the freeway.

Side note: Don’t take tax advice from me. The Oregon Department of Revenue, with their stupid income tax, is ruthless. One year I made a mistake on mine and underpaid by like $250. I may have been smoking crack with a girl who did taxes when I got to them on April 14th. Five years passed, I got kicker checks, worked overseas, etc. Then I get a notice of that. They tack on like $1500 of penalties with retroactive 10% interest that abracadabras it to $3k. They need the money for K-12 education, so the kids know which grade of gas I asked for.