Taxes

lolabright

We only owe the state $26 this year! That is about $100 less than the last two years. I wish we had gotten an accountant two years ago instead of this being our first year. Also we will be getting a federal return this year, but it is only because of Xander. I think Andrew and I really have our deductions at the right amount finally.

PlumCallaLily

That's great!

 

I am a dummy when it comes to this stuff.  We have never owed.  What causes people to owe?  Is it because of state to state tax on property and such?

SSM&JLM

Yay!  That's awesome that you guys have everything perfect, see below about my DH issues with big refunds.

PlumCallaLily:

That's great!

 

I am a dummy when it comes to this stuff.  We have never owed.  What causes people to owe?  Is it because of state to state tax on property and such?

Normally people owe b/c they don't have enough taken out.  I know for us, we never switched to married in our withholdings, but if 2 people do, they may not have enough taken out to cover what they owe.

We always get minimal back from VA, but I've heard that it's just the way the tax system is setup for hte state.

ETA: Also if you don't own a house, your tax liability tends to be more b/c of the mortgage interest deduction. 

crows1920

we used to always owe (i own shares in my dad's company so that made us go from getting some back to owing) so we eventually just started contributing more $ to taxes in each paycheck which had finally balanced out until we had z. now we are ahead again so we'll have to do some adjusting.  i prefer to have it be as close as possible.  of course it's great to get a chunk of $ money back but these days i'd rather have it on a daily basis.

Rebekistan

I am so anal about tailoring our withholding perfectly, and when both of us changed jobs in 2009, I was constantly updating it. We owed that year. 

In 2010, I thought I'd finally gotten it right. We owed federal, but got back half of what we owed from the state.

I've really got to change our W2s this year to fix whatever was wrong with them, but now I'm afraid I'm going to overestimate (twice bitten, four times shy!)

But in the end, I prefer to owe the taxes because we get to use the money all year and, as long as we do our taxes early, we have enough time to save up for the payment if we need to.

Even though we filed in February, we STILL haven't gotten our state refund!!! Grrr ....  

lolabright

I normally have ours done by mid February, but this year was just so hard to sit down and do them. I was more than happy to hand all our paperwork over to the accountant and have her do them for us.