Blah...tax surprise...(vent)

juangela

DH and I have never had to pay when we have done our taxes. We usually get back a couple grand (which is how we like it. I don't deal well with surprises). This year, with our newest deduction, we figured we'd bring in a couple g's and that would push us to our "safe to start looking at homes" threshold in our savings.

So last night we did our taxes and we owe almost $3000! Blah. Apparently when we got married we both switched our withholdings to married claiming 0, which deducts less than single claiming 0. We are so blown!  While we are blessed we have more than enough in savings to cover it (and that we had Liam as a deduction...we would have owed more if not for him), it isn't what the savings were supposed to go toward, you know? So now not only do we not have extra $$ to add to our savings we are set back in our savings, too. Plus, since we owe more than $1000 we have to pay a ridiculous $21 penalty. Not huge, but definitely salt in the wound .

So...house hunting will have to wait until later in the year when we are able to get our savings to our comfort zone.  And I'm emailing my HR contact as soon as I post this to change my withholdings back to single claiming zero! I don't want any more surprises like this!

munkii

That really stinks.  Luckily your new addition prevented it from going too much higher! 

When you start house hunting, do you plan to stay in SS?

 

wittyschaffy

That does suck.  I got hosed on taxes one year too because I used my education award from 2 years of doing AmeriCorps and it counted towards your income even though it paid for school loans.  I had to pay quite a bit but did it on a payment plan because I just didn't have that kind of cash laying around since I had spent 2 years as a volunteer! 

karma007

How disapointing!

juangela

munkii:

When you start house hunting, do you plan to stay in SS?

We are looking in the general area. Juan's sister watches Liam and she lives 2 minutes away from us right now. We don't want to be too far from her because she takes amazing care of him!

We're looking in SS/Wheaton (which is technically still part of Silver Spring) and North Kensington area because the homes are affordable (for the area) and they are kind of central to the county which will be beneficial when I finish grad school and am looking for a job in the school system.

My dream is to work in a Montgomery county school and have Liam attend wherever I'm working so I can keep an eye on him and know his teachers really well!

Milliechel67

Ug... I feel you.  We paid over $4000 last year.  We paid quarterly this year based on last years'... hopefully we're not in for any surprises this year.    I hate taxes. 

Fotophreak4c

My husband is paying back almost 8k in taxes...when we moved from Florida his job cut him his retirement/stock check. So, he has to pay taxes on that money. He has kept most of it, so we have the money to pay, and the rest he is using to pay for school.

Witchys_Woman

Yikes, that's awful. I was moaning last year about having to pay about 700. I haven't even thought about doing taxes yet...I don't even have my T4.