Tax Penalty

hawkilady

So I did our taxes last night... getting married costs us around $800 in a tax return.  Would be double that without the making work pay tax credit. 

DH's solution... "I guess we should have a kid by the end of 2010 so we have a deduction for this year" - haha, I told him we only have a month and he just got really quiet...

SBS0628

This is why I'm scared to do our taxes...

I'm hoping, since we're both students, our lifetime learning credits will balance out the getting married factor.

hawkilady

It's why I've been putting it off for the last month too.  Hopefully yours go better than mine did.

mamie329

Marriage and a stupid move I made this year ended up in us owing $3.

kaleyandjason

Ours turned out way better than I thought they would. I am still a student, so that helped. Plus the work credit. We didn't pay anything in state this year (we payed around $50 last year), and got back a nice chunk of change from federal that we were able to put ALL of into savings. I was very glad.

megs1383

Ugh that sucks! I've been fearing my refund this year. Since we are tight on money right now, I thought it would be nice to do our own taxes this year (since i've always done my own). But DH had a fit, so now we are going to his family's "guy". I don't really agree, but whatevv now he can deal with it, haha.

mofe

What did you claim for exemptions?  We both claim Married 0.  I would rather pay in and get a big chunk back. We always use the money for a house project and this year it goes toward our Fence. We got pretty much the same back that M did last year. We lost out on my refund though so that part bites.  We also won't be getting back the property tax refund this year b/c somehow we are over the income limit. 

mamie329

We both claim 1 and married. As much as it sucks to not get a refund, I think I'd rather not give the government an interest-free loan the rest of the year.

hawkilady

I've been claiming 2 since I bought my house and DH claims 0 and even with the reduction we're still getting $2k back.  As much as I dont want to give hte govt a loan, I also like the lump sum payment becuase its much easier for me to save than if the money was just in my paycheck. 

kaleyandjason

hawkilady:

I've been claiming 2 since I bought my house and DH claims 0 and even with the reduction we're still getting $2k back.  As much as I dont want to give hte govt a loan, I also like the lump sum payment becuase its much easier for me to save than if the money was just in my paycheck. 

Ditto. I would just spend it if it was already included, but this way it is direct deposited into savings. 

luckycooky

mamie329:

We both claim 1 and married. As much as it sucks to not get a refund, I think I'd rather not give the government an interest-free loan the rest of the year.

Ditto.  I won't save it throughout the year but I am paying off my cc's with an embarrassingly high interest rate (+20%).  We do get a little back because of where we were in our tax brackets and that will go toward paying the last little bit off on one of the cc's!

shagadelk7

H and I owe typically about $1500 each every year. This year we are getting over $2K back which absolutely blows my mind. We both claim married 0 and withhold at a single rate.

 We both have bartending/waitressing jobs on the side and usually get royally effed over so we have them take out the max amount. This year it really paid off!

chrissyvcm

Hawki - that's hilarious! From a financial standpoint, we did awesome this year. We're netting about a $15 refund between Fed and CA. We're getting $896 refunded from Fed and owe $831 for CA (plus the cost of filing the returns). Mike is a resident of NV and they don't have state taxes, only my income is taxed in CA. If both of our income were taxed, I'm sure we'd owe.

We both withhold at Single 1. We never changed our withholdings when we got married. I get several large bonuses throughout the year, and opted to not have fed/state withholdings from those bonus checks so that we'd even out.