wherein Liz pays her taxes

[edenfalling]

I finally got around to doing my taxes today. Yes, I know, I am a terrible procrastinator. They're not even very complicated. I can't use the 1040EZ, but I can easily get away with the 1040A because while I own a few stocks and whatnot, the amount they pay me in dividends and capital gains is piddling and its only practical effect is that I have to use the Capital Gains worksheet to calculate my taxes instead of the more standard tax table approach. Which is five minutes of easy arithmetic, so whatever. And I always take standard deductions, I am way too poor to get caught by the alternative minimum tax, and yet I earn just a little too much to qualify for the earned income credit, so it's all really very simple.

I do my taxes by hand, with a dinky free souvenir calculator I picked up at a Cornell dining hall twelve years ago. Hey, it works. :-)

The upshot of all this is that the federal government owes me about $920, and the state of New York owes me $15. (NY would owe me $25, but I chipped in some money to a few voluntary charitable causes, because on occasion I like to pretend I am a kind and generous person.) This is nice, since the combined refunds should just about cover the cost of my new laptop and Microsoft Office suite.

I am by and large okay with giving the government an interest-free loan each year, because I know myself and I'm quite sure I'd fritter away the money on stupid things if I had it in my possession all year. This way I can generally make a contribution to my IRA, or, as with this year, use the refund to cover an unexpected large expense. (Last year's refund basically covered my ambulance bill from my bout of norovirus in late 2012. Blegh.)

Comments

[aishuu.livejournal.com]

I think you're getting back part of the money I'm sending in.... you should have heard me swearing last night!!!

I do not understand how "0 withholdings" still equals = tax owed. I don't have anything else generating taxable income...

I do mind giving Uncle Sam a loan, because I'd rather keep my principal!!

[edenfalling]

Tax withholding is a strange and peculiar thing! For example, the reason I have been getting stupidly large refunds every year is because of the way my health insurance is set up. The automatic tax deductions from my paychecks are made on the basis of my actual hourly wages and so on, but because my health premium payments are then taken out of my paychecks pre-tax, the total wages that get reported on my W2 form at the end of the year are a few thousand dollars less than they would otherwise be. Hence refunds.

In an ideal world, I would prefer to keep my principal, but I know that in the real world I'd just spend it so that would not actually do me any good at all. *shrug*