Posted on 04/15/2019 6:39:39 PM PDT by bitt
We got nailed this year with owing.
Not something we could not handle in full but due to us not paying attention to our deductions.
I would rather owe then give uncle sam a free loan.
Our CPA has us fixed up for this tax year.
Must be nice to make enough for such a swing to occur.
Tax cut for me. TY2017 total tax was about 6K, TY2018 was 5K on essentially same income. Adjusted withholding last year and still had to cut a check yesterday. Ideal situation. Effective tax rate was about 8%.
Yes, when I mentioned how this was going to affect us in threads a few months back I received a lot of negative comments. I do not blame President Trump for the way the new code was written. He asked for reform and signed it into law but Congress writes the tax code. Politicians like Paul Ryan are the ones responsible for the specifics in the code.
People who take the standard deduction got a break. People who itemize but make above a certain amount of income got a break. But people who itemize who are in a lower tax bracket got hit pretty hard. Obviously there was some motivation for setting it up this way, but I do not know what it was. It wasn't done by accident.
I had the same $ in 2018 and got back 2.5K instead of 1.3K.
gotta change my witholding!
You really have absolutely no clue about the mechanics of this do you? People who do not itemize got a break because the standard deduction went up. People in the higher tax brackets like congress critters got a break because their lower tax rate more than makes up for the loss of personal exemptions, the cap on the deduction for state and local taxes and the loss of other deductions as well. Businesses got a big break. But people who itemize who are in the lower tax brackets got hit hard.
Paul Ryan and the rest of the swamp creatures actually wrote the code and decided who the winners and losers were going to be. I am not sure why they wrote it this way... but I guarantee that it was not meant to be helpful to President Trump because it hurts a lot of his most vocal supporters. It was a turd thrown in the stew.
AND your regular paychecks went up some.
Do ALL of the math-—and don’t leave out the differences in your regular paycheck.
Those who have really high property taxes got capped at $10,000. They are paying more.
I never got into situations where itemizing was necessary or beneficial...for me personally, that would have entailed going higher on mortgage and other loans than I was comfortable with within the constraints of my budget.
I know folks in my budget/income range who itemize but most of them either buy bigger than is smart for their income or have rental properties, or even their own very small businesses.
Sorry if I offended - only have my personal experiences to go by and I obviously have no idea of your, and other’s situations.
Apologies if I caused you any angst.
No apologies to me are necessary... I am sorry if I was snippy with you. Blame my leaner bank account. Mostly only those who have been itemizing for various reasons would be aware of the effect the changes that took place in 2018 would have on their yearly tax bill. For some reason we have heard a lot about the cap on state and local taxes, but very little about the loss of personal exemptions which were offset by a large increase in the standard deduction for those who do not itemize but not offset in any way for people who do itemize. For people in the lower tax brackets this was the larger hit in most cases.
I am not sure what the motivation for this was. But it was written into the new code by Paul Ryan and company not President Trump. Many people who are in this situation are politically active supporters of the President, so I am not sure that this helps him.
How likely are itemizers in the lower tax brackets to give more money when they have just had to pay thousands of dollars more in income tax? And I have had to explain this over the phone to more than a few callers who were hoping that we would be contributing to various political causes that we have supported in the past.
Since this change does not seem to have any type of fairness that one can extrapolate... it almost had to have been a politically motivated reason along the same limes as the cap on SALT tax deductions. I am guessing that the political calculus that was performed by Ryan and Co. indicated that this also would hurt Democrat contributors more than Republican contributors. That is the type of game that swamp creatures play in every piece of legislation.
There is no such thing as a corporate income tax.
Oh, congress can pass a tax and call it that, but corporations do not have a mine in their back yard that produces dollar bills. Every cent of income a corporation gets can ultimately be traced back to something they sold to a consumer. Even if they sold a machine tool to another corporation, the tool was used to produce things that ultimately consumers paid for.
The true meaning of this is that corporate taxes are passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices. You might not want to recognize this truth, but it is still a reality.
Modern ideas about taxation are that higher income people should pay a higher percentage of tax. This is called progressive taxation and is generally recognized as the most fair kind of tax.
Because corporate taxes are passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices, they are actually regressive taxes -- the poor pay a higher percentage of their income in these hidden taxes than the wealthy.
Democrats love to tax corporations because the tax is hidden to the ultimate payers, and they love to demonize corporations in the process. It is an easy thing to do because most people are ignorant of the truth, if not too stupid to recognize it when they are shown it.
Unfortunately, other countries understand this very well, and in the international marketplace, corporations which pay taxes in these countries have a competitive advantage over American companies. This exports American jobs to other countries. Is this really the result you want?
The Media trying to spin no tax cut because refunds were lower is garbage spin.
I will admit they were probably more aggressive with the withholding tables than they could have been, which gives hit stupid talking point.. but the idea folks didn’t get a tax cut is nonsense.
I do not think this is really true. They only real limit on itemized deductions was the state and local tax limitations. The increase in standard deduction just meant that it was larger than the itemized deductions many people used to take. Their deductions increased so they benefited, even though they "lost" the itemized deductions.
We itemize because we still have large itemized deductions, and we only lost the SALT deductions.
Well then maybe you need to look s little closer at the tax form? Do you still see the exemptions that were there in 2017 for you and your wife and your dependents? If the answer is no... then where do you suppose that additional $4050 a piece that you got to deduct in 2017 is in 2018. Obviously, you didn't itemize this year... did you? It is completely basic, you don't have to scour through the tax code to find it. This isn't a debate where you can think something that is in black and white on the page in front of you is true or not.
Good, then let’s raise the fictitious, non-existent corporate tax rate back to 35%. I am sure they, and their army or Washington DC lobbyists won’t mind, since as you claim it doesn’t exist anyway.
You missed the part about high corporate taxes sending American jobs overseas.
You have to understand that we have been trying to discuss the tax code as it is written down in black and white on a mere 75,000 or so pages. CurlyDave is trying to argue in generalities about a theoretical construct that exists in his imagination where personal exemptions still exist and there is no such thing as a corporate income tax. I am not sure that we should try to confuse him with our real world experiences actually filing our taxes.
The "$4050 a piece" that you are moaning about was rolled into your standard deduction, which went from $12,700 for married taxpayers to $24,000 in 2018. This is an increase of $11,300. The last time I learned math, $11,300 was larger than $8100.
You apparently have a great deal of difficulty with reading comprehension! If you itemize you don’t get the exemptions any more. Let me repeat just for you. If you itemize you don’t get the exemptions any more and if you are in a lower tax bracket you are most likely are paying considerably more in taxes.
This is what I wrote in post 50 that you said that you did not “really believe”, “For some reason we have heard a lot about the cap on state and local taxes, but very little about the loss of personal exemptions which were offset by a large increase in the standard deduction for those who do not itemize but not offset in any way for people who do itemize.” Is this what you do not believe or is it something else?
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