You will get deductions on taxes, And you will get more checks from social security for them.

just reeling because so many things changed on our taxes at once. I am mostly irritated that I have to pay back on premiums for craptastic health insurance we can't use, and that the scholarships are counted as income. It seems like college kids could use a break financially, especially given how much it costs to go to school these days.

2017 was the last year I supported a kid in college and was able to deduct her tution & she was my dependent. Now she is has a full time job, so no longer a deduction for me.

My other kid makes $78,000, and just paid $11,000 federal income tax and $4600 CA state tax. Plus her 1 bed room apartment in silicon valley costs $2500/month.

stressed out from living on the edge of financial ruin. And the darned Trump voters, who are feeling the same pain, couldn't see that that they were voting to make things worse for themselves.

I made $75,000 married with no dependents and paid $1300. My single friend makes the same and paid $1750. I would check into an over payment if i were them.

For one, she is still single, and no deductions. But I will look into it for her.

some child in desperate straits.

people who actually care about their welfare.

I have IRA's and gov't forces me to take money out from IRA and it is 100% taxable income. Currently I am forced to withdraw double the amount of my social security. Keep in mind this is not any money coming in. It simply is a transfer from IRA account to checking account, and it is 100% taxable income!

are really struggling to keep going. Not sure how people who can no longer work are expected to manage on a very meager SS income, and Medicare has to be supplemented on top of that.

and most restaurants will take 10% off the bill for seniors.

but the income you put into IRAs was tax free when you paid into them.

You would be retired and in a lower tax bracket when you take the $$ out. Doesn't alwYs work that way.

.... would grow with the markets and the growth would be untaxed, so you get compounded untaxed advantage.

And then you pay tax as it's distributed.

It works if you can afford to contribute during the earning years. And works better if your employer matches your contributions to some extent.

More of your Social Security may become taxable.
Up to 85% of it!!

Although i dont know why you would have to withdraw 2x your ss income.

I am 74.. only income is ss and IRA plus T- Notes. My MRD is about 4% of IRA value. as I remember

calculated in the regular way, just happens to be twice as much as their SS income.

when it was put in and it grew untaxed. Here, you are actually in the fortunate situation that the amount that you must withdraw, which is computed so you are taking out equal amounts for your expected life time (recomputed each year because your conditional lifespan increases as you have survived another year), is greater than you would like to take out of your IRA. Obviously, your IRA withdrawal plus your social security provides a more than comfortable living -- even as almost all of it is taxed as regular income. In addition, if you withdraw more than you spend, you will then have savings and/or investments outside the IRA.

I guess you could consider money coming into your checking (or savings) account as income that you could spend -- even though it is coming out of your IRA. (As money is withheld when you transfer money, it will make your portfolio decrease.)

Personally, I will be in that situation in a few years -- and I consider myself fortunate. I do not consider it unfair that I will pay substantial taxes.

but only WHEN I CASH OUT WHEN I CHOOSE. Instead I am forced to cash out 5-6-7% every year! If I die before cashing out all IRA money, then just tax the remaining amount to be paid by heirs.

Even that would not be so bad, but it makes my social security go from 0% to 85% taxable income! So it is a double whammy.

under that age.

when you put the money in those IRAs. It might have been less than the current hit is. And it IS money coming in if you put it into a checking account. How you choose to spend it is up to you. And while the amount is 100% taxable income, it's still only taxed at your marginal rate, whatever that may be.

This is where it helps to be relatively poor in old age.

So I paid my taxes on the (then) value up front to be tax-paid when I start taking distributions., Unfortunately, the Germans are now saying they don't recognize a Roth IRA, and even though I paid the taxes under US law, the Germans want to tax the whole thing (at 50%) AGAIN.

at least with your taxes!

If I give them all of my income, they are downright easy to deal with. It's only when I ask to keep MY "fayah shayah," that they get ornery.

"Let me tell you how it will be, that's one for you, nineteen for me........."

fan of RMDs, of course it is 100% taxable...(non-Roth) IRAs use pre-tax dollars

when putting money in IRA. So now I pay the taxes based on RMD. Just wish it was voluntary withdrawal instead of REQUIRED MD. They should tax me after death, so I wouldn't care.

My real bitch is that my social security becomes taxable income because of the RMD.

coming in and making things better.

The CPA said he would show me how my taxes would benefit me next year. He said a lot of people were doing pretty well with the tax cuts. Well, next year, I will have to pay estimates that are half again higher than this year. I can't WAIT for the next tax cut. I should be in hog heaven.

was doing estimated taxes. His bill came in at a hundred grand. I have no idea how far off the estimate was, tho.

$40/month. I've been carefully figuring out how I'm going to spend it. Can't find anything cheap enough to fill the bill.

I surely had something wrong in my calculations.

It would be nice if we could prove he stole the election and we could kick him out, revert everything he repealed back to Obama days and get back to some sort of normal.

If that makes you feel any better. It simply means you are required to pay taxes 4 times during the tax year.

I hope that doubling of standard deduction in 2018 will help me a little bit. Because I seldom itemize.

His estimate of how much I am going to have to pay next year is several thousand above this year. Nothing will have changed.

I'm going to finish double-checking everything and then take it back to him with an argument on that estimated tax.

getting hit with late payment penalty.

Why pay IRS any sooner than required!
Keep the money in your savings account and earn a few pennies in interest.

Pennies in interest is right. About time that changed, as well. We are funding the banks.

except police and fire available, which you most likely never needed. And if you are retired, you drove very few miles, and did not wear out the roads any.

My property tax is over $4000 but I don't mind paying it because I totally support the public schools, even though my kids are grown. That's were Dolt 45's $10000 cap really pisses me off. Those of us who live in states that support good public schools are being deliberately punished. We are of modest income in a very average house for the area and will definitely go over the $10000.

because they have already paid property taxes through age 65. After retirement, their incomes are smaller, and have no kids most likely in schools.

food stamps and Medicaid.

When many people will be surprised that the new tax tables (your bigger paycheck!) are making them under-withheld. I changed mine back to taking the same $$ as before.

People are going to soil their jeans next year at tax time!

The fu**ing republicans and Shitler will get ALL the blame too!

I need to break even with no refund check/no amount owed (especially since I always file late, in October).

[link:https://www.irs.gov/individuals/irs-withholding-calculator

I got $2400 back. I had huge medical expenses for my dear departed husband.

private mortgage insurance deduction was taken away by the tax cuts but the latest budget bill put it back in. There's probably more like this.

Health insurance payback got us too... :/

Does that mean you made more than they thought so they want a refund of premium assistance?

account in mid March and the I got 1,660 at the end of the month in a tax return. I wish your government wasn’t run by such self enrichment assholes.

My employer is in the USA but my legal residence is in Germany, so I not only get hit with the (de facto) 50% in German taxes, there is a (now 6 year old) dispute going on with the German government over part of my income that is taxed at the source in the USA. The double taxation treaty says a US citizen taxed on U.S. income in the USA cannot be taxed again on that income in Germany. As I pay full boat in the States, that plus the additional 50% the Germans want on the gross leaves about 10% for me.

The Germans are good at ignoring the double taxation treaty when they find it convenient to do so. In addition, I sold something I inherited in 2002, and while the Germans don't tax gains on inherited objects beyond the normal inheritance tax (I paid that in the USA) if they are held a year or more, the USA takes 28% plus 3.8%, so I have to pay 31.8% on the gain when payment is made or June 15, whichever comes first. I am overseas, so I can ask for a delay if payment comes later.

For all the taxes I pay over here, I get no pension credit and no health insurance whatsoever. I get to pay them, end of story. The USA is one of three countries in the world that does not recognize residence-based taxation. The other two are Eritrea and another country in (I have been told) in Africa, but I forget which. I did seek a quote for health insurance when I moved here. I was quoted €2500 a month, or $36,000 a year, in premiums. I keep my Blue Cross from my employer in the States, even though they deny everything incurred over here (Blue Cross could be the "Great Benefit" out of John Grisham's novel, "The Rainmaker" ).

Your employer's costs to maintain employees over there must be huge.

We have a few expat friends, but they're retired. They seemed to be having different experiences too complicated for me to follow before the Tax Heist. Although next year's filings for 2018 will be the especially interesting ones, you've got me newly curious now.

All the rest are locals. The costs range from downright affordable (Switzerland) to ridiculous (France). In France, we pay a payroll tax of about 55% of each employee's gross salary to the government.

Americans abroad represent about six MILLION U.S. citizens. We have a population higher than that of about half the states in the union, and have ZERO representation in Washington. There was one, count 'em, ONE man willing to take up our cause, if he regained his Senate seat in 2016, and his name was Russ Feingold. Unfortunately, he got buried by Ron Johnson (wanna bet today would have seen a different result?), and we have the same old representation in Congress, which is nobody. The far right couldn't care less as they think we are on a different planet altogether, and some on the far left seems to find it convenient to portray us all as millionayahs and billionayahs, claiming we live in Mediterranean villas and get driven around in limousines chauffeured by impoverished natives. The result is that the U.S. nationality is one of the most expensive of all to possess if you live in another country, but still draw your income in the USA.

In my case, it is actually the USA that respects the law most. They do refund me my withholding when I file my (extremely complicated) return, showing that I pay the higher German rate. They do hit me where I have income the Germans don't tax (such as my inheritance windfall, but fair enough--being taxed once, I can live with), but they do NOT try to tax me twice on income where the Germans have first priority. The Germans, on the other hand, don't care one whit about what is taxed in the USA, and want to tax it again, thumbing their noses at the Double Taxation Treaty with the USA, which they signed at the same time we did. The Nazis had a great word for it: "Enteignung," which can basically be translated as "dis-ownership." Then, as now, faceless bureaucrats decide what they will take from you, and if that's everything, well too bad. For a country that is showing a budget surplus, and has an otherwise very level-headed government compared to our present one, it is very frustrating to deal with.

vague notions about some of this and didn't know some at all.

Chatting with friends and acquaintances is often of limited benefit at best, although I really enjoy getting to see a few, when we do. Most tend to be older and conservative, though, and most of the latter seem to feel almost everything everywhere is somehow the fault of Democrats. When they do criticize other governments (a lot also), it pretty much has to be blown off given the source.

Three of my four grandparents came from Germany before WWI, and all known European relatives of my husband's family were murdered in the 1930s-40s. With the very grim associations of forced expropriation, I'd have thought Germany would want to dis-associate from the whole concept of enteignung. Not reassuring that it's still being targeted at usefully helpless minorities.

I liked hearing something nice about our country. Imagine, we actually do some things properly. Spread the word!

One of the more unfortunate traditions is its "Beamten." A Beamte is basically a Civil (and they are often anything but) Servant, and they have their jobs for life. In Germany, that means police, teachers, workers in city government, tax auditors, etc. etc. Whatever they do, you CANNOT fire them. If a teacher is horrible, teaches the students nothing and is generally useless (my daughters had several like that), they were immune to any action. As a contrast, my elder daughter, when she spent a semester of high school in the USA, had a math teacher who was completely incompetent, and 95% of his class failed his first test. He was dismissed before the first month was out, and that was at a Dallas public school!

The Beamtensystem is the result of a system where "Staatsdiener (servants of the state)" were expected to make things run smoothly. It just grew and grew, and now these people control just about everything. When they are good-hearted, competent, and have a good grasp of their functions, things work. When they are incompetent, lazy, or just plain mean, life becomes very unpleasant if you have to deal with them. One time, when my wife went to vote, the people running the polls were Beamten working for the city we live in. They told her she couldn't vote here because she lived in Munich. She said that was stupid, because she had NEVER lived in Munich, had only visited the city twice in her life, and had a driver's license to prove her residence. The stubborn Beamten refused to believe her driver's license, and refused to let her vote because as far as they were concerned, she lived in Munich. Their computer said so, and therefore it was so, end of discussion. My wife then had an idea. She told them to look up our two daughters in their computer (then something like 5 and 7 years old). Yes, they were there at the correct address (I still had my residence in the USA in those days, didn't live here full time). She said she was going to call the police and demand that they either arrest her for child abandonment or let her vote. There is ONE thing in all the world German Beamten fear, and that is pubic ridicule that could hamper promotion down the line. They let her vote--with a provisional ballot, of course, but the vote was allowed. Later on, they agreed to "transfer" her residence to where it had been all the time, but they were too lazy or too incompetent to erase the erroneous "previous" Munich residence.

In the 1970s, when I was living briefly in Massachusetts, I had some German friends visiting me there. It was their first visit to the USA, and they were flirting with the DKP (German Communist Party), which was fashionable at the time. They grew out of it later on, but at the time, they came, expecting to hate the place, because that was what they had been told to do. Remember, this was before internet and computer-controlled everything. I took them down to Northern Virginia to visit my parents and show them around DC. They asked in which place I had registered myself with the police. I didn't understand the question. They repeated the question, and sure enough, that is what they had asked. Having no criminal record and no idea what they meant, I asked them to explain. In Germany, then as now, everyone must register their residence with the police ("polizeiliche Anmeldung&quot . When you move to a city, you have to register with the police. When you move away, you have to tell them. When you get to your new city of residence, you have to do it all over again. I told my German friends we had no such system, which is why I had no idea what they were asking me. They were confused. They asked what happened in the USA when you moved to another city? I said, you packed your stuff and left. Period. If you wanted your mail forwarded, you left word at the post office, but that was about it. After all, I wasn't a child molester, fer Pete's sake. Later on, I asked a German Beamte at one of their city halls why they did that? They explained it was easier to keep track of criminals that way. I said, I see, so you think of every citizen as a potential criminal? In the States, we tend to give ordinary people the benefit of the doubt, and go on the assumption that they are not.

The reaction of my DKP friends was actually downright amusing. To them the "polizeiliche Anmeldung" was a part of everyday life, and it had never occurred to them that there were countries that had no such system, or who might find the concept somewhat oppressive. One of them said in complete astonishment, "Das ist Freiheit (that is freedom)." Well, if you're a white kid with no record, anyway. Black people getting their asses whipped by red-necked racist cops getting their jollies might not be so quick to praise our shining universal freedoms, but my German friend, ready to believe that everything about the USA was awful, got an awakening when he found that despite our many flaws, not EVERYthing about the place was hell on earth, and that state oppression was a relative term.

because I lost state and property tax deductions. The blue state penalty.

to a purple state. Here seniors get a tax break on property tax.

A couple of weeks ago we got a notice telling us we owed $9,000+ on our 2016 taxes for under reporting income. They based it on a 1099 form they said was for $46,500. The actual form says $4,650. Big difference. I rushed off a letter with a copy of said form and still haven't heard anything. The icing on the cake is our quarterly taxes are going UP for 2018. Thanks, Don.

The Trump administration must be putting a lot of pressure on the IRS to catch fraud if they are going after middle class people like me. They screwed up royally claiming I under reported income when they completely ignored the cost basis for some investments and wiped out some deductions. I got an accountant to sort out the first one because I was worried about it. Then they made the same mistake again. I did the second one myself with TurboTax because it was fairly simple mistake on their part.

I shudder to think how many folks would not challenge it and just end up paying more than they should.

... I ended up owing 12K since I have a side job from which taxes aren't withheld. So, since I'm not paying taxes on income from that job throughout the year, I now have a huge tax bill.

This is really one area where I tend to agree with the Republicans that taxes are too high, but they don't actually intend to do anything about it for nobodies like me. My wife and I are killing ourselves trying to get 3 kids raised and save some money for their education. I was all set to pay down some credit card debt, but no, Uncle Sam wants his money. I believe in paying my fair share, but we are in debt and Trump's little tax cut stunt tosses us crumbs in expectations of buying our vote.

It's doubly frustrating because that asshole brags about not paying taxes, meaning the "little guy" like me gets bled dry while that piece of fucking garbage is crying for a military parade to boost his ego.

That's the question.

I haven't asked our son and DIL about this. Their situation is rather similar to yours with kids, college and all.

... but I worked more at my second job. As I recall, the new GOP tax plan wasn't to go into effect until this year, so their so-called "efforts" wouldn't impact my 2017 tax burden.

we haven't asked our kids about this.

Good luck pulling through.

Document every expense imaginable, and as a contractor you should probably have a home office too!

Not really a good thing, my income sucks because I can't find a good job.

Because it only means you had too much tax withheld during the year. In essence you lent Uncle Sam money at zero interest. You could be earning interest on it all year, instead.

Why??

Just curious.

but my kid in college saved me! She was my dependent and her tuition gave me a tax break. So net tax was cut down by half.

On an average balance of $2,250, the interest at nearly every bank would be about 2 bucks, before taxes. The whole "minimize withholding and put it in the bank" is so 70's.

pays 6-7%

Timing could affect value just when one needs it to pay taxes. I've got about 42% of my money in bond funds as i near retirement. By EOY, i'll be right around 50:50, which is where the retirement experts say i should be.

Short term, near cash funds are paying tenths of percents.

Even in your example, you're talking about $15 bucks. If the timing doesn't work out and it's tax time when the fund weakens in value, it could cost money.

Doesn't seem to me the risk is worth the return.

these days. Blame it on the FED. They have created humongous bubbles in all asset classes. Those never end well.

Back to getting large tax refunds, it just is irritating to pay Uncle Sam any sooner than necessary. I always sell equities in January which delays paying tax on any gains by 15 months on to next year April.

But, the returns are so puny that i've never been all that compelled to minimize my deductions from the paycheck. The part pulled out of 401k dwarfs any such (as you said) piddly difference.

Uh.... That's not new. My daughter got hit with that all through college.

Basically room and board portion is taxed. And it’s taxed at the parent’s rate.

because the entire scholarship money went to pay tuition directly. She never had it her hands.

... "it's my own damn fault".

I under-paid the estimates for capital gains (yes there were some during Trump's first year), so I owe.

These are capital gains in some fund that I pay no attention to. Now I pay attention to it. This year, capital gains, not so much, thanks to threats of trade wars.

Life seems ok at 70, treading water. Don't make waves

On the other hand, I think it also matters WHO is paying 'higher taxes."

I like what I see in social democracies. Would love to have a system like that here. Cradle to grave health coverage and education, at the very least.

Do not like the disaster the Repubs made of our healthcare. Our policy under brand new Obamacare was great. Cheap and gave us good coverage. Neither applies now.

My point is that we are like many people in the country. Just one lost paycheck away from disaster. No rainy day emergency fund to dip into if anything goes wrong. Getting dinged with more unexpected bills has us paying with credit cards, and that just keeps us down in a hole we can't climb out of.

Sorry if it sounds like complaining to you, but my fear of losing our home is very real, and I despise the notion that our kids will not only graduate college with a slew of their own debts, but when we die they get to take on ours when they try to settle the estate.

For such a rich nation, sure seems like a lot of people are struggling a lot more than they ought to be.

See post #15

A lot of people living paycheck to paycheck would be ecstatic to get an extra $500 per year

surprise books and tech fees on a credit card, or made part of a mortgage payment, or some car payments, or...or...or...

The list is endless for so many of us!

I am very glad I didn't spend Easter with the Trump voters in my family. I think I would have had an anyeurism trying to stay civil! I know that a lot of the problems we have are long-term systemic ones, but I can see what the Repubs have wrought just in the last year and how they have made everything so much worse!

That is 1 Trillion good comment.

And I hate this blue state/ red state divide.

All 50 states are treated the same. Taxpayers in all 50 states follow the same tax tables, and have the same amount of allowable deductions. Whether you live in California, Michigan, New York or Texas, everyone gets to deduct the exact same amounts including SALT.

For state tax. Federal about the same but not much has changed. We have small mortgage so don’t itemize anymore.

Being retired though income stays same but food, gas, and everything else up.

and my MRD hit in two years. Something you might look into, IF you don't need the money from MRDs is a QLAC, which bypasses RMD on your IRAs. My broker just sent me info and I'm plugging that scenario into my spreadsheet now to see how it looks.

Google QLAC, too detailed to generalize here other than to say it pushes out use of that money much further and guarantees an income stream to end of days.

...as opposed to their overal tax liability?

I know we'll get a refund, because we always overpay through my wife's quarterly estimated tax payments.

That would mean I made $130,000,000 or so. If I do, I might just designate an extra $10,000,000 for food stamps, AmeriCorp, or something similar.

Not so much this year, but projections for next year significantly worse.

Go to a CPA, and he did the formulations for next year based on the supposed implementation of the Tax Deform bill.

dividends & capital gains distributions--and I barely got a hundred dollars of it. The rest was re-invested. And with no deductions, I'm gonna get reamed.

My penalty for smart investing................