re: Who owes taxes this year and is waiting to file?

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I owe…a shite ton. Like $35k. Waiting to file too to see what happens.

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A married couple with no dependents with an income somewhere in the neighborhood of $230K would have a federal tax liability of around $35K. Thats an effective federal tax rate of 15%.

Thats taking the standard deduction and no dependents - worst case scenario.

A single person in the same boat would have an income of around $190k.

That is still a LOT of damned money. Too much. But it is far less than most people who complain about their tax burden would claim their burden is.....thus the number of morons who are paying around 10% federal income tax (effective rate) who are clamoring for a flat federal income tax of around 15%....an effective increase of 50% for those filers complaining already about their 10% rate.

Most people will tell you, when you ask them how much they paid in taxes, how much they were refunded..."What did you pay in federal income tax" and the answer is often "I got back $1500" which indicates they think they got back more than they paid when in fact what they got back was what they overpaid. The same is true of most people when you ask them what % of their income goes toward federal taxes. Most have no idea. Many will claim somewhere around 33% which may well be their entire tax burden, federal, state and employment taxes combined, but is NOWHERE close to their federal burden alone. ONLY earnings between $394K - 501,051, or the last $106K of an income of $516K for a single person would be taxed at anything close to 33% (32% actually).

IF someone has an effective federal income tax rate of more than about 20% they need another accountant. The income needed to generate a 33% effective federal tax burden would be somewhere in the neighborhood of $1 million for a single person or $1.25 million for a married couple.

Man, I scratch my head with all of y'all having to pay. My wife and I make very good money but we also file a Schedule F for a super, super small "farm" we have on the couple acres we live on. That alone keeps us from having to pay; we make improvements to our "farm" every year. I don't see why more people don't people don't do stuff like that... find ways to save/spend your money on yourself/home/assets instead of having to pay the federal govt.

And yes, it is 100% legal. I have a couple animals.

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So if you made $10 over into the next bracket, only that $10 is taxed at 24%. You should be taxed more for not understanding this.



A lot of people do not understand this. They think you just jump head first into a new bracket and all your income is taxed at that

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Yep, I'll hear some rednecks claim each year to not take a raise.

My mom still loves to say "he just did it as a write off for their business". Lol sure, but that doesn't mean it was free.

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My mom still loves to say "he just did it as a write off for their business". Lol sure, but that doesn't mean it was free.

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As Jerry Seinfeld said "I am not sure they know what a write off is...." (paraphrased but close)

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They will also not work overtime because "it all goes to taxes". Folks really do not understand their own economies let along any economy....

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I was an engineer intern for the company rebuilding the Bay St. Louis bridge after Katrina. As i'm sitting there during on boarding with all the 20 something good ole boys filing out our W4s, almost all of them were claiming 9.

What was the end game there? Get as much as you can now and deal with what you owe later? Avoid it completely and dare the fed to come get you?

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This. Used to be, sometime before 2016, that working people could claim work related expenses on their tax returns.....if you were working more than about 50 miles from your residence you could write off motels and meals and mileage etc. If you were working a bunch of overtime on the road you wanted to take home as much as possible knowing you were going to write off a BUNCH of work related expenses to offset the 9 dependents. You could actually claim more than 9 and you could claim exempt BUT both would result in the employer having to justify either situation and many contractors would simply not do so and turn you around. 9 did not trigger any extra scrutiny.

This was eliminated for all but military members. The standard deduction was increased substantially to make up the difference but the end result was a modest tax increase for about half the individuals filing a tax return.

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That makes more sense for them, though it seems it could still backfire. It was about half and half Alabama and Louisiana boys in the room that day.

I keep dragging my feet. Got all my records for last year gathered but just need to sit down with TurboTax and crank it out.

Why do today what you can do the evening of April 15th?

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Worked mine up on TurboTax earlier and it looks like I owe $1800 this year, about $1100 more than I owed last year. Should I wait to see if Trump is going to do away with Federal income taxes or what? Anyone else waiting to file to see what happens?

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My wife handles all that shite. I’ve been emailing her all my tax statements for the past month and hope for the best. If we filed separate I’d just take my shite to the liberty tax people. The ones with the Statue of Liberty standing by the road with the ankle monitor.