2019 Tax Thread

[just]

Thought it could be fun to share our tax journeys this year?

When are/did you submit your tax return?
How are your preparing your return? Paper? Accountant? Software - Turbotax, FreeTaxUSA, Credit Karma, others?
How did things shake out? Did you end up where you want to be for refund/owe?

Also if you enjoy geeking out about these things, www.reddit.com/r/tax/ is always a good read, once you filter out the 20 people a day who get confused about why their refund dropped when they entered their second/spouse W2.

[just]

We submitted tonight. We were waiting for the Electric Vehicle form to be updated and that happened on Tuesday.

I filed with Credit Karma which was completely 'free', but checked in TurboTax since I think their interface is better. Turbo tax was going to charge me for the EV form. 

We usually look to get a 1k ish refund because I'm still traumatized after a year I owed a lot and had to dip into savings. Our refund would have been just a shade under 2k without the EV credit, so we are going to try the new w4s this year to get that down a little.

We didn't quite expect to buy an EV this year, and by the time we bought it in September, I wasn't bothered changing anything, so we are getting that full 7.5k credit back which is nice. It's going right against our loan.

[krystee]

My former accountant told us last year we’d likely break even or owe a tiny bit this year. I did my own taxes on TurboTax, checked everything about 26 times for accuracy, and we are getting an. $8,000 refund. I have to say, that was a happy shock. Our accountant has given me terrible advice before (refinance our 1.8% student loan into a home equity loan so it’s deductible...what?! Lose that interest rate AND put my home at risk?!), so I should not be surprised. Glad I didn’t have more money taken out of my check like I originally planned to after he told me that!

We are paying off a credit card and doing some house projects with the money.

[farmvillelover]

I'll file them as soon as I can but still waiting on 1099s for our brokerage accounts, and a 1099 from 2 firms that paid me a fee share for cases that settled last year. 

Expecting a large refund and I cannot wait.

[ellipses84]

Our taxes were the least complicated they’ve been in several years and I was so glad not to have to check a box about being impacted by a natural disaster. I use TurboTax to file. Our income went up a decent amount from last year and we’re getting $4k back for federal and state combined which is more than I expected and it’s going to bills. DH’s income is really unpredictable and I don’t want to owe, so I’m not going to change anything about our withholdings for next year.

[brooke77]

I haven’t filed yet, but I ran the basic numbers through TurboTax. I wanted to know if we will owe so I would have a few paychecks to set aside money for taxes instead of dipping into our savings specifically allocated for other things.

Luckily, we should be getting a refund this year.

[flygirl]

This is the earliest I’ve filed ever I think-I waited a week after the 31st mailing deadline just to make sure I hadn’t missed something. I used Turbo tax and we got about $750 back, but I expected it since I had extra taken out of my check to make sure the increase we both got last year didn’t cause us to owe.
I always cringe when people say “I was getting a refund until I entered my spouses W2”-if you would have theirs first, the same thing would have happened!

[scout8]

We have an accountant do ours as we are self employed and incorporated so they are pretty complicated. This is the last year though as we made some major life changes and will now be employees.

We are going to owe close to 60K because we sold two properties that had been rented out for about 14 years. This is AFTER taking an almost 200K loss on the two buildings. So much fun! Ugh.

[trissie18]

We filed early last week.
My mom does ours through TurboTax.
We are receiving a $625 federal refund and a $300 state refund. I am happy with where we ended up and don't plan to change anything as 2020 should be similar in numbers.

[puppylove64]

I did ours with credit karma. It seems too easy since we don’t have enough to itemize anymore. Our refund is much smaller this year because I changed my withholding and we had a 1099 for a prize we won. Looks like we are paying about $800 in taxes on some airplane tickets we won 😬 but I think everything is right. I’m hesitant to submit since it seems so off from prior years. I keep hoping I’ll remember something else and get a bigger refund

[lessel]

We filed last week. Used TurboTax Deluxe (buy on coupon at Costco)--it's like an annual tradition at this point.

Our refund was a bit larger than expected but I also kind of effed up this year. We'd itemized for years but last year with all the changes, the standard deduction was the way to go. I just assumed that would be the case this year again without thinking, so I hadn't been keeping receipts for donations throughout the year. I wasn't really doing the math on the new house we bought with higher property taxes, etc. and we were literally $600 over the standard deduction, so went with itemizing this year...and if I had records of donations we could have recouped a bit of that. We had especially donated a ton of clothing, furniture, etc. with the move last year that I didn't even keep track of because I wasn't thinking we'd itemize.

[kershnic]

I need to itemize for state return but not for federal and TaxAct is superly confusing me about how to do this. We bought our first house in late 2018 so this is the first time we’ve had to deal with reporting mortgage interest and property tax and all that. I’m sure I’m going to mess up our state taxes. But I had no clue what our fed results would be because a lot has changed in our financial lives since 2018, and I’m pleased we should get 2k or so from the feds.

[doggielover]

We filed last weekend, because a lot of medical expenses and work expenses that we're reimbursed I wanted to get it done right away. Right now we're just waiting on the refunds. Everything was done through turbotax and we're getting a substantial refund. Sadly I think we're going to use the entire refund and replace the windows in our house this year.

[sadlebred]

When are/did you submit your tax return?
I met with my CPA this week, so it will be submitted very soon. Her turn around is 2-3 weeks. I have to wait on some forms that don't come until after Feb. 1; I'd love to meet with her earlier if I could.

How are your preparing your return? Paper? Accountant? Software - Turbotax, FreeTaxUSA, Credit Karma, others? CPA. I don't know what software her team uses.

How did things shake out? Did you end up where you want to be for refund/owe?
I will find out in 2-3 weeks. I did some quick calculations and have an idea of what I'll get back. It's a moderate amount-slightly more than last year.

[carmenere]

We usually use a tax preparer, but H insisted on doing our taxes online this year. We usually aim for as close to $0 refund as we can get. This year we owe ~ $100 federal and get a $1,500 state refund. Thankful for that - it will offset the $2,400 we just dropped on our HVAC.

[wildrice]

We got the lowest refund ever - only $1 federal and about $700 state. We've had a lot of changes in jobs/income in the last few years so I don't know how much of that is attributable to the tax law changes and how much would have happened anyway. I always use TurboTax.

My H filed for unemployment for the month he was between jobs, and for whatever reason our current state had him file in Iowa, since we had moved here only a year before that. So, we have an Iowa refund of $29, but it costs $40 to file with Turbo Tax. Can we just not do that or do you have to file no matter what? I guess I could try to do a paper version but I've literally never in my life done that so I'd worry I'd mess it up.

I actually haven't filed anything yet, but it's just sitting waiting for me to do that. Since it's not a huge amount and it's just going into savings anyway, I don't feel a lot of urgency.

[carmenere]

Feb 14, 2020 9:44:42 GMT -5 wildrice said:

We got the lowest refund ever - only $1 federal and about $700 state. We've had a lot of changes in jobs/income in the last few years so I don't know how much of that is attributable to the tax law changes and how much would have happened anyway. I always use TurboTax.

My H filed for unemployment for the month he was between jobs, and for whatever reason our current state had him file in Iowa, since we had moved here only a year before that. So, we have an Iowa refund of $29, but it costs $40 to file with Turbo Tax. Can we just not do that or do you have to file no matter what? I guess I could try to do a paper version but I've literally never in my life done that so I'd worry I'd mess it up.

I actually haven't filed anything yet, but it's just sitting waiting for me to do that. Since it's not a huge amount and it's just going into savings anyway, I don't feel a lot of urgency.

I don't know if TurboTax gives the option to file federal only (since state is where they make money) but usually state tax forms are not that hard once you've completed the federal.

[ellipsis]

I normally do ours early in tax season since we typically get a refund, but I've been too busy with work and life to look at it yet. Also I am dreading figuring out the details for the backdoor Roths we set up for 2018 and 2019.

[wildrice]

Feb 14, 2020 10:09:40 GMT -5 carmenere said:

Feb 14, 2020 9:44:42 GMT -5 wildrice said:

We got the lowest refund ever - only $1 federal and about $700 state. We've had a lot of changes in jobs/income in the last few years so I don't know how much of that is attributable to the tax law changes and how much would have happened anyway. I always use TurboTax.

My H filed for unemployment for the month he was between jobs, and for whatever reason our current state had him file in Iowa, since we had moved here only a year before that. So, we have an Iowa refund of $29, but it costs $40 to file with Turbo Tax. Can we just not do that or do you have to file no matter what? I guess I could try to do a paper version but I've literally never in my life done that so I'd worry I'd mess it up.

I actually haven't filed anything yet, but it's just sitting waiting for me to do that. Since it's not a huge amount and it's just going into savings anyway, I don't feel a lot of urgency.

I don't know if TurboTax gives the option to file federal only (since state is where they make money) but usually state tax forms are not that hard once you've completed the federal.

They do! You can go through the whole thing and then delete the state return - it asks you what you want to do. I think they are betting on the fact that most people won't delete and will just file, though, so they'll get their money. I do plan to do that with my current state return, I just don't want to pay $80 to file in 2 states. 

Good to know that the state forms aren't hard - maybe I'll try that for Iowa. 

[jinkies]

I did a first pass on our taxes with TaxAct. We owe a little over $1000, which is where we usually end up. I am not 100 percent sure that I captured everything correctly though, so I am going to try to do them again somewhere else and see if I get the same number. In previous years I was able to reduce what we owe by contributing to my IRA and finding some other deductions, but that didn't work this year (presumably because of higher standard deductions). But I want to double check.

This will be the last year that I can file by myself because I started freelancing and it will be too complicated next year.

[Mrs.flang]

I'm a CPA so I used our program at work.  I don't do taxes for work though so I had a partner look them over, even though they are pretty straight forward.

I skipped all our estimated payments this year because money was tight with my 12 week family (un-paid) leave, and we ended up owing around $3,800 between fed and state.    We owed last year too but I was hoping it'd be less with my lower annual salary from the leave. 

I promptly increased my withholdings because I realized I never stay on top of the estimated payments.

[farfalla2011]

We filed ours using Turbotax the last week of January and received a $4K refund last week. It's the least complicated my/our taxes have been in almost 10 years and it was amazing! Like literally, W2s, donations, house expenses and a new dependent. So glad to not have any investments or rental property to figure out this year. Last year we owed a large amount of money because of investments so we had no clue what to expect this year although we knew we'd get a refund. We were very pleased with where we ended up, although we'll be making adjustments this year so we don't get quite as big of a refund back for 2020. We're planning to save part of the refund and put part of it towards paying off our vehicles.

[Wallflower]

I'm starting mine this weekend. (And my 87-year-old mother's, as I do it for her.)

I'm expecting a more complicated process and a lower return/owe since I sold some stock last year. Now I have to figure out the tax basis on the stock, but I'm hoping Turbo Tax will help with that since I bought the stock (stock options) and had to declare that through TT several years ago.

[k3am]

We usually get ours done just in the nick of time. DH was a (very small %) partner in his company, and they don't send out the final forms we need until 3/31. This is our last year that we'll be doing them so late since he recently switched companies.

We use a CPA for our taxes.

We're going to owe a pretty hefty sum this year. We've always had to pay, and in 2019 with the job change DH had a mandatory redemption of all DH's stock in his company. We've worked with the accountant and should have enough funds set aside to take the hit.

[Poppy]

I bought H&R Block software through Amazon and used a bunch of my slow shipping credits so it ended up only being $13.

Haven't finished them yet but we'll get a huge refund because H had been too lazy to fix his withholdings. *eyeroll*

wildrice, all states are different but Colorado's are super easy, you can do it on their website and just plug in numbers from the federal 1040. I never pay for state filing because it's just so easy.

[dcn]

I use H&R Block software through the military so it is free. I have everything entered but was waiting on another W2 for our move in January and just today realized we aren’t getting one. We’re getting a $4,100 refund, which is the child tax credit so outside of that I was right on!

[mlkgls]

I filed a couple of weeks ago and received my refund on Wednesday.

I tried to adjust my withholding last year, but still ended up with a 4K+ refund and was vaguely irritated it wasn’t as as high as in previous years. lol. This was the first year I haven’t been waiting on my EJ statement until late February and I am doubly glad I shuffled $ around. 

This year’s refund goes into the pool fund. 

[mae0111]

We use an accountant because DH and I are both self-employed and we own rental property. We pay quarterly taxes based on estimates that our accountant provides based on the previous year, and we adjust based on the performance that quarter. But there are usually some last-minute tax law changes that result in us owing a lot or getting a lot back.

This year we submitted everything a few weeks ago, except one brokerage statement. There’s one international holding that’s messing up the timing. I’m anxious to see what happens.

[aspentosh]

Submitted yesterday (finally got the last of our paperwork)
Turbotax
Getting back a few thousand between federal and state, like normal. No matter how well we plan we always get back more than $2k and I'd really love to be closer to $500-1k. Oh well, at least we don't owe.

[sadlebred]

Here is a link to "When do I get my refund back in 2020?"

clark.com/personal-finance-credit/taxes/tax-refund-schedule-dates/?utm_source=Clark+Newsletter+List&utm_campaign=6f384441df-Clark_Daily_Newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_afa92deb83-6f384441df-71256673