Everyone making it through tax season OK?
 

I filled out my taxes and sent them in a few weeks ago. Supposed to get all state and federal taxes returned since I'm a poor student and barely make any money.

So today I get the mail and there is my envelope from the IRS. I open it up expecting a nice check, and there isn't one, only a letter. I think perfect, I'm getting audited or I screwed up the numbers somehow. So I start to read the letter and it says they have made a change to my return. Now I'm positive I screwed up and am going to barely get anything back or owe more or something.

Then it continues to say that they found I was eligible for another tax credit which I overlooked, and they added it on there for me, an extra $400!!! I almost fainted, this is the IRS we are talking about, not typically known to be kindhearted fellows! I always assumed if you missed an opportunity to deduct taxes or increase your refund that you just missed out, can't believe they actually did something in my favor.

So this year was a good tax year for me, which is awesome because it will be the last. Graduating at the end of this month and will have to pay in big bucks from now on like a good little American.

How did everyone else make out? IRS screw you over? Get some money back? Waiting until April 15th at 11:59 PM outside the post office?!?!?

P.S. Let's try to not turn this into a politically charged debate. That Tea Party Express bus tour was in my town today and I've heard enough of the politicking already.

We have to pay...yet again. However, after doing our taxes, I found out that we made about $15k more than the year prior so I'm really not too upset at the amount we have to pay. We'll be doing our final review on Turbo Tax this weekend and submitting payment as a debit from out account sometime early next week.

Got a little over 5K back this year - most of it was the deductions from paying out the nose for college for our daughter.
I dont usually bitch too much about paying taxes - something has to pay to keep this country running...

I made a bit less, so I got back a bit less. Nothing special... :smile:

I'm glad we didn't have to pay.

Well lets see.
 

First off I retired from the US Navy 13 years ago after serving proudly for just over 20 years, so I draw a monthly retirement which isn't much. Our three younger children lost their mother two years ago to cancer and we receive approx $600 a month for each of them from SSI (tax free). I made about $10K taxible income on my Gov job and my wife has become the real bread winner in our family now so our combined income was well over $100K last year. She is still working out the details on our filing, but we usually receive about $6K to $10K in our return. We are not expecting much of anything different from 2008 to 2009.

Considering where we both were about 10 years ago both in our second marriages struggling to get by month to month it is nice at 50 to finally be in a better relationship, and in much better shape financially. We're still not rich by any means because of our upside down home in California, but we make ends meet. Our 5 older children are all in college at some level and paying their own way thorugh the system, so all we provide are occasional gifts to help them out. This is what we have both worked so hard for all of our lives, and it is good to finally not have to worry if we can afford to eat out occasionally. She was just asking me where I would like to go for our annual Gov paid R&R this summer while the kids are at their grand parents. Vegas, Hawaii, Florida, or Jedju Island(Korea)? My response was how about Vegas 3 days, then California for a few days and pick up the kids, then Hawaii for a week with the whole family before returning to Korea.

Did alright. Paid some local, got some back from Fed. Try to keep it mostly a wash.
I have two young kids in daycare as wife an I both work. That's $2K/mo alone. >_<
Need the cash flow per mo rather than a lg return.

We pay an acct a modest fee ($95 for a joint file, with four state returns, wife and I both work in NJ) and its the best money I spend all year. Not only is it no headache w/ the complicated filing, he knows how to get better returns far better than I can do. He's saved us thousands.

I guess I'm the only one screwed until April 15th at about 5pm... I'll be working on people's tax returns until then! or filing extensions until then... then getting ridiculously New Orleans styled drunk!

You guessed it, I'm a tax professional...

Usual bending over from filing 3 state, federal and uk tax returns...

I'd normally get about 1600-1900 back every year, except this year I didn't expect anything because I haven't worked in over a year. But since this is the first year I filed with my wife I didn't know what to expect, considering she only makes 24K the yr.
I was floored that we jointly received a little over 2K back :party::party:

Well sounds like most people are doing alright, haven't had any horror stories yet, but I'm sure they are out there.

I always wonder when I see those ads on TV for tax debt relief lawyers. The people on there say, "I owed the IRS $150,000 and the tax debt lawyer got it down to a fraction of that!" And I think, how the heck can you owe that much to the IRS unless you are doing something extremely stupid, irresponsible, or downright criminal? It's not like the IRS just decides out of nowhere that you owe them all this money. Yes, there are circumstances where you might make an accounting error and they tell you you owe an extra few hundred or even a few thousand, but to owe tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars isn't a simple accounting mistake. Hope I don't offend anyone with that statement, but I just don't get it.

The IRS figures penalties and interests which can often lead to a hefty bill.

I've seen a guy loose over $100K fighting with the IRS over a $8000 bill, this was over a 12 year span.

I've also seen people get bills from the IRS from 1992 and later periods about an amount owed plus interest and penalties.

I have a hard time feeling sorry for those people. They either got caught cheating the system, or they were dummies for not doing their homework. Think about how much money you'd have to make to owe the gov't 150K....I made over 130K last year, and my total taxes owed (prior to deductions)was somewhere around 14K (cant remember for certain). Those people made huge money somewhere, and tried to get away without paying their fair share.

Almost done!!!!

Just trying to track down ONE start price on a stock that I bought back in '05 and realized in '09. That was before I was online, and with a F.A., who no longer works in the biz. And I have no idea where my paper copies are. Someone kill me.

Well, myself and the mrs, didn't fair to bad ourselves, between us both working and being full time students as well, plus 3 kids to boot, we got a total of a little over 2k from state and 9k from federal, so.......what did we do with it...hmmm, a real nice vacation to disney for the family, paid off kids Private school bill ( catholic school ), paid off wifes van, then had to get the damn thing repaired..go figure....it never fails, then I purchased a 07 jeep liberty sport, with 21k miles on it for my self, i finally retired the old 89 jeep wrangler with 190k for miles on it....... and for the big rc investment...a set of new lipo's for the erevo.... that about sums it up.....and No i'm not overly rich either, just ask crazy jr or CHC....