Took a bit longer then usual because of dealing with my car donation and the credit on our windows, but done in early March and refund in the bank. It was fast this year. No refund from California yet, but they need the money more than I do.
I try to get my taxes done before my birthday. That way I know how much I can afford to spend on myself that day. Since I have the earliest birthday in my family, we all pretty much do this.
Finished them about three weeks ago.
Much cash back from feds
A bit back from state
A big check to be written to the city
Urgh. First time I’ve done them myself in ages.
Beginning of February. Got my whopping $42 refund in just a couple of days. Think I blew it on a bunch of games from Steam.
He said we owed $8400, which was then dropped to 2K after factoring in the deferred home purchase credit.
There wasn’t mention by our accountant of any underreporting penalty though. I ask my company to withhold the maximum amount possible for the government and don’t claim any exemptions even though we have a child, this in an attempt to pay more during the year and have the smallest payment possible come tax time.
You’re saying that if at the end we owe more than 1k that we pay a pro rated penalty to boot?
I said “underreporting”, what I meant of course was underestimating.
As mentioned above, ours aren’t due until April 30th but I filed early in March after all the information slips arrived. The deadline for delivering them in Canada is Feb 28th.
Small refunds arrived and spent already 
Ditto.
QFT
Yes. See my post above. I had skipped my January estimated payment, so I owed a small penalty.
I did but I didn’t know about something called a Form M, so I’ll have to amend it.
My point was our penalty was less than 1% of what we owed. So, perhaps the guy who owed $8400 was hit with only an $80 penalty. Not sure if there is a minimum, or how it works. Just throwing it out there. I’m not happy about paying the $1344, but it is a rather small price to pay for keeping my money all year.
It depends. You have to owe more than $1000 and it has to be more than 10% of your total tax due. There’s also an exception where if you pay enough to cover your total tax liability for the previous year (sometimes it has to be 110% of the previous year) but still end up owing money, you don’t have to pay a penalty. Now, if you skip estimated payments, you could owe a penalty even if you are getting a refund.
It was any underpaid withholding or quarterly estimated tax payment back in the 80’s, and the threshhold was $500 at that time. Apparently the threshhold has been raised to $1,000 now before penalty applies. Also, quarterly estimate payments must be paid by a due date each quarter or some penalty applies.
Near as I can tell, in general, the penalty is an additional 4% of the tax owed, if you owe more than $1,000. If you owed $8400 in tax, there would be an additional penalty of roughly $336. Yeah, not a killer (at least to someone who makes enough to owe some $8G on TOP of what’s already been withheld), but if someone walked up to me and told me to just give them nearly $350, guess what? Ain’t doin’ it! So I sure wouldn’t be happy to pay it out to Uncle Sam, especially due to my own stupidity.
As I said, I was being pedantic. But the mathematics bother me. A $1344 penalty on top of $8400 is 16%. Unless you’re Warren Buffet, I just can’t see how you managed a return on investment of more than 16% to “make it worth it.”
Even if you did earn 16% on your investment, by the time you got done with penalties, your net earnings is Zero. Kind of a waste for “holding onto your money all year.”
Agreed if the $1344 penalty applied to the guy who owed $8400. I owed over $150,000, therefore the $1344 for keeping my money until the end of the year is not so drastic a fee.
Just mailed Form 4868 (automatic six-month extension) and a check for twenty grand–a wholly arbitrary amount that should keep us out of jail until we separate out business and personal finances.
We are our accountant’s comic relief.
My taxes were done months ago. Already spent the refunds.
Owing $150K, that indicates your AGI was some half a mil for the year, which means your actual income was much higher. Seems for that money, you could have bought a little money management education. So, the penalty on $150K was some $1300. That comes out to a penalty of nearly 1%. Hard to buy since the IRS isn’t typically that charitable. But okay, let’s take that at face value.
Now, the inflation rate for 2011 is running about 1.6%. Add to the fact that you just paid 1% on top of that, 2½% is a hell of a loss to take, just to hold onto your money for a year. Now, if you were to change your story and claim that you invested it, say at 4, 5, maybe 6%, I still have to wonder why you’d just throw away 1% of those earnings for shits and giggles.
One thing I’ve learned about money is that if you don’t try to hold onto it, it fritters away a lot faster than people imagine. So I’m figuring you either have a lot of imagination, or you’re destined to be broke sooner than you expected.
Georgia taxes are annoying. I you make over a certain amount, GA makes you include a copy of your federal 1040. It cost me seventeen extra cents to mail in the state return. I got the state refund back last week. Cashed it. Tuesday, I get a letter from the feds saying I forgot to fill in a line on the 1040 along with a form to write the number on and send back.
I guess Georgia didn’t care.