Taking My Lumps
The ides of April. Uggh. My seemingly 3 lb envelope is sealed & awaiting it's scenic travel to "Internal Revenue Service Center" in Austin, TX. Of course, the fact that I'm waiting til the last minute to file means one of two things:
* Either I'm getting a refund, and I'm a bloomin' idiot for waiting this long, or
* I owe Uncle Sam some dough.
I'll let you figure out which one is correct (Hint: check #2815). Of course, Leah and I saw it coming for a few reasons, the main one being the fact that I pocketed every stinkin penny of my real estate commissions and didn't hold any out for tax purposes (oh, I'm supposed to send in money every 3 months? Oops!). Throw in the self-employment tax, and a small withdrawal from a 401(k), and you a recipe for a $582 bill from the I.R.S. In the positives department, it wasn't a really successful real estate year, so my expenses/deductions offset a pretty good bit of my income from it (which lowers self-employment tax also, since it's a derivative of how much you make). Another plus this year is the ability to deduct state sales tax that you pay. Now, keeping McDonald's and Kroger receipts for a year isn't really the way to go, but being that we bought not one, but TWO new vehicles last year, we paid quite a bit of sales tax. I guess a few little crumbs thrown to me here and there ain't that bad.
Leah and I have already adjusted our payroll deductions in an effort to prevent this next year. It was either that, or have a kid. So we chose the lesser of the two evils.
* Either I'm getting a refund, and I'm a bloomin' idiot for waiting this long, or
* I owe Uncle Sam some dough.
I'll let you figure out which one is correct (Hint: check #2815). Of course, Leah and I saw it coming for a few reasons, the main one being the fact that I pocketed every stinkin penny of my real estate commissions and didn't hold any out for tax purposes (oh, I'm supposed to send in money every 3 months? Oops!). Throw in the self-employment tax, and a small withdrawal from a 401(k), and you a recipe for a $582 bill from the I.R.S. In the positives department, it wasn't a really successful real estate year, so my expenses/deductions offset a pretty good bit of my income from it (which lowers self-employment tax also, since it's a derivative of how much you make). Another plus this year is the ability to deduct state sales tax that you pay. Now, keeping McDonald's and Kroger receipts for a year isn't really the way to go, but being that we bought not one, but TWO new vehicles last year, we paid quite a bit of sales tax. I guess a few little crumbs thrown to me here and there ain't that bad.
Leah and I have already adjusted our payroll deductions in an effort to prevent this next year. It was either that, or have a kid. So we chose the lesser of the two evils.
posted by Eric C at 9:08 AM
1 Comments:
Sorry I'm too late to save you some money on this year's taxes, but remember next April that you can deduct those "expenses" from the gentlemen's clubs when you take, um, "clients."
Post a Comment
<< Home