I hate stupid people . . . and everyone I know is stupid . . . people I respect and think very highly of are . . . stupid . . .

Taxes are very basic . . . you owe taxes to Uncle Sam or you don't. It has nothing to do with your withholding.

Everyone just states I got a refund or I owe.

We paid $3,276 in taxes to Uncle Sam and another $1,927 to California in taxes, that being said people don't understand why I say that we paid taxes yet get a refund. We get a refund because we had more withheld, it really doesn't have anything to do with how much tax you must pay.

For example:
If we had zero withheld from each paycheck all year - we would still owe $3,276 (FED) and $1,927(CA) and I would have to find $5,000 to pay my taxes.
I WOULD OWE MONEY !

If we had $100 withheld from each paycheck all year - we would still owe $3,276(FED) and $1,927(CA) and I would have $5,000 to pay my taxes.
I would break even !

If we had $250 withheld from each paycheck all year - we would still owe $3,276 and $1,927 and I would have $10,000 to pay my taxes but I only owe $5,000 in taxes. Now I get a $5,000 refund. I still paid $5,000 in taxes and got a refund.

Nothing changed, tax is tax . . . you owe or you don't .

Please let me know that someone lives on my planet and understands taxes or else I am going to find a new planet . . .

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Mommy to three wonderful boys, Justin (11), Nicholas (9) and Scottie (8)

I hear you.

Isn't it crazy how people don't understand that they are basically using the Uncle Sam Savings and Loan all year, interest free?

Thank you for being on my planet!!! I guess i'm not alone.

I am just so tired of everyone asking if you got a refund or had to pay . . . then I say well we got a refund but had to pay $5,000 in taxes ad they just look at me like I'm on the wrong planet.

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Mommy to three wonderful boys, Justin (11), Nicholas (9) and Scottie (8)

How about this..... we paid and still owed so we didn't get a refund and had to pay the tax we still owed.

I read a fact that 47% of Americans do not pay Federal tax. That just amazes me. I wish this country would go the route of a flat tax.

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I am liking the Fair Tax an awful lot personally. I think if people really read it and understood it that it would be popular. The IRS is useless. What amazes me is all the people that don't pay seem to mostly go untouched, but if you make a mistake on your tax return, boy do you get audited quick!

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Check out my homepage http://julie.mycoupons.com/

I just get tired of all the tax talk this time of year, especially those who look forward to and bank on getting a refund. To me, it's stupid to get a refund and have let the gov. use your money all year interest free. No one gets it that they could have lived easier, saved, etc all year by planning. Of the two, I prefer having to pay in April.

The absolute WORST are the folks ( and yes, I know, I know, it's legal ) who in the end, actually get money back due to earned income or head of household. The money they get back is not what they "paid". It is money GIVEN to them because it works out that way.

dl

I hear you! My mom is an EA and OMG...the stupid people who come through her office (and some make big big bucks) who think they shouldn't owe a thing...good grief.

I do not want a flat tax. For one, it would put my mom (and thousands of other EA's and tax preparers) out of business. Two: In talking with my mom (who is one of the smartest people I know), she has looked at the flat tax in depth. Running some "samples", she has found that a lot more people will owe more with flat tax than the current system. Deductions, credits, etc...they don't mean the same (if anything), under a flat tax.

If we do move to a different tax system, I am more inclined for it to be a "use tax". Kinda like the gasoline tax. If you don't drive, you don't pay it KWIM? That way if you use it, you pay the tax. It puts a lot more burden on businesses to collect the tax but I think it's a pretty fair way of taxing.

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Proud to say I haven't shopped at a Wal-Mart since Sept 2003

I disagree. Sort of.

I wouldn't call 'the folks' "The Worst". All they are doing is filling in the blanks on a form or taking their W-2's to H&R. You plug in the info and it is what it is.

It's not 'the folks' who get the money that are the worst. It's that the system is set up that way that's the problem.

I second that the IRS is useless. You can call them with a question and speak to several different people and possibly get a different answer from each one. They won't even let you report cheats they tell you to fill out a form even if you say "I don't want a reward I just want cheaters to pay their fair share."

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The political system is broke and it's a joke.

Don't be so quick to condemn before you stand in their shoes and experience what they have.
I have a friend that is a SAHM. In 2007 her DH made almost $60,000, in 2008 that income dropped to $47,000, in 2009 that income dropped to $36,000. This income is from working the same job and the drop in income is due to lack of work and having to draw unemployment on the off weeks.
In the past this friend and I have discussed the people that get a larger refund than the amount of taxes they paid in. We never understood how this was possible. My friend now understands how this is possible because it happened to her when she and her DH filed their tax return this year. It's not like she chose this to happen.

Its actually very helpful for us single mothers, that has a child to support on just her income. When I get my refund, I can afford things for my child that I wouldn't be able to any other time. I get caught up on my bills, buy things for the house that we may need at that time, and buy him some clothes that I'll know he'll need in the coming year. I can't count on child support, cuz his dad thinks he doesn't need to pay it, though there is a court order out and they have garnished his paychecks, so he just doesn't work or file taxes to make sure I don't get it I can only get my paychecks to stretch so far. So if I'm one of the Worst, then so be it.

gn - I don't condemn, I have opiniions, and experiences and know people can do it on their own. You have no idea where I've been and what I've lived, but keep reading. Your friend is a sahm. I could say simply: she should get a job. They still have an income and wouldn't be the first to have to adjust to it on their own.

mel, please. I am also tired of the single mother/father/parent cry. The child is your responsibility, not society's. I didn't pick the other parent of the child, you did and you should deal with that situation, not society. Go ahead and tell me I don't know how it is. However, I do. My mother raised SIX of us without ANY assistance. She knew how to sacrifice and go without herself. She figured out how to balance her outgo and her income. She figured out how to stretch things and how to make special times special. For us, because she knew we were her responsibility.

It is a vicious cycle. We cannot continue to take and take and take to repeatedly give, give, give, give, give ! Math just doesn't work that way and it's already telling with our huge deficit.
Taxes are overly burdensome to those who do pay.

dl

Sorry, but just because she chooses to be a SAHM doesn't mean that the rest of us should give her extra money via a tax refund, does it

I didn't get that geniichols was saying "Woe is my SAHM friend - feel badly for her and give her a subsidy because this isn't her fault."

Genichols said she and the friend used to discuss it and couldn't figure out how it could possibly happen... but now that the friend's husband's income has dropped, she sees exactly how it happens.

The friend is a SAHM.... meaning they have kids and have been a one income family.

Nothing changed about their lives except that the husband's income dropped, so they paid less in taxes, and then come tax time, found out that they are now in that situation that used to puzzle her - having a return that shows a refund in an amount greater than what they paid in.

Genichols didn't say the friend *wanted* it or chose not to work so she could get freebies.

My guess is that the friend just did what most of us do when things get tight. She probably scaled back, quit going out to eat, and got Netflix instead of going out to movies. There is nothing unethical about a family having just one income, so long as they can feed, clothe, and house their family on it.

It doesn't sound like the friend had any clue that Uncle Sam was going to 'reward' her for not working until she filled out her return. And if she used tax software, where you simply answer questions and it does the work, well.... the honest answers to the questions left her with the 'bonus.'

Now what we hope *doesn't* happen is that the family decides it's better not to start earning more because they will lose that bonus.

My guess is that for every family who innocently benefit from the earned income credit, there is at least 1 maybe more who use the system.

Case in point, a janitor who works for our school system gets the earned income credit. They have three children. The children were all in school and the mom stayed home, because of the earned income credit.

That seems crazy to me.

I just googled to see the maximum credit a family can get, and it's about $5500... so less than $500/month.

Mind you - as a *taxpayer* I think that's too much to just be giving away.

But... well, I just don't think we need to be giving it away, period.

What I started to say is that if we made it a system where *only* families with two incomes qualified, that really goes against my core beliefs. I do think as a society we do better when kids have their moms home with them when they're small. I don't like the idea of creating a system that *only* benefits those who opt to put kids in daycare, kwim? You *get more* of the behaviors you subsidize, and I don't care for the idea of government opting to 'favor' families who have kids at babysitters and 'penalize' those who don't via our tax code.

I just think these types of subsidies need to disappear for *everyone* and don't want to see the tax code used to 'judge' who is worthy of an extra $5,500 and who isn't based on their family's economic values (2 income vs 1 income).

When you factor in everything else-- the kids qualified for sooner care (free health care), so he did not take out insurance from work and instead received the money the district would have paid instead. They knew where to go to receive groceries from different churches. They are ones who worked the system.

Of course there isn't. BUT if you're getting more back in taxes than you paid in, then you ae NOT feeding, clothing and housing your family by yourself: the rest of us are subsidizing you.

I'm not disagreeing with you, KJ. Well, wait. Let me rephrase this...

We don't know enough about anyone's situation to make that call. I will tell you a personal story to explain what I am saying....

A couple of years ago when I filled out our tax forms I discovered that *we* were in that situation! We are careful with our money and I honestly had no clue whatsoever we were close to that threshold. NONE. Our home is paid for. Our vehicles - paid for. No credit card debt at all. We planned our life this way, with me working for several years prior to having kids. It's allowed us to live comfortably on one income that by most standards is not that huge an income in America because every penny that *does* make it into our bank account is money that is not already obligated to a bank, kwim?

I have an at-home business that some years has generated more money than other years depending on how hard I've worked at it. Because we don't *need* my income to feed and clothe our kids, a couple of years ago life was just busy and I didn't pursue much work. And of course, less work equals less income.

And when I filled out our tax returns, I was shocked to see that my *not* working had resulted in our income being low enough that we were getting to claim child tax credits, etc. (no earned income credits, but more in the way of child tax credits than in previous years). The small amount we'd paid in was overshadowed by those credits, and we were going to get a refund worth more than we'd paid in.

We *had* fed and clothed our family. We DID make enough to do those things. I had NOT worked the system, and can't begin to tell you how surprised I was that Uncle Sam seemed to think we were 'poor' and needed a bonus. We'd taken a pretty nice vacation that year, done some remodeling, etc... and it was all because we had spent our pre-child years setting ourselves up to live on *one* income with our kids with the perks of *two* incomes, since for most, that second income just seems to pay the mortgage and car payments. We have none, so....

Anyway... I agree with you that the system is really flawed, but we can't say for sure that genichols friend was not feeding and clothing her kids without that help. If she was like me, she spent the year feeding and clothing them and had no clue Uncle Sam thought she couldn't until she did her taxes and found out she was 'poor'. lol

ETA: Meant to add this....

I realized, before we submitted our forms, that I had a $1,000ish deposit I'd forgotten to record as income and it bumped us back out of the bonus zone. The crazy part? Without that $1,000 in income we would have gotten a 'bonus' of about $3,000 from Uncle Sam! That is CRAZY to me that I would have been $2,000 richer had I *not* taken on that $1,000 job.

ETA Again: I just re-read my post, and think it may have been confusing, so let me clarify....

* We spent several years with TWO full-time incomes and paid off our house and vehicles in full using my income. Every penny went to paying off that 'starter debt'.

* Kids came along, I quit my f/t job, and eventually started my own business doing freelance work from home. My income provides extras, fun stuff, etc., but we *can* get by without it, and in the years when I'm not all that inclined to take on extra work, I just don't... and we still eat, clothe, and house our kids just fine because we are debt-free.

* One year I didn't work much. We ate. We wore clothes. We were fine.

* Uncle Sam apparently didn't think we were fine, because when I did our taxes I found that we were within $1,000 of qualifying for all sorts of freebies because of our 'low income'. Due to the number of dependents in our family, DH's adjusted gross looked a lot smaller than it actually is, and apparently someone in the government felt sorry for us and wanted to give us some money somebody else had earned.

And I think that's pretty crazy.

well I paid a heck of a lot in taxes this year my friend on the other gets welfare childsupport & sales plasma for the prepaid visa & worked a few months at walmart to get a refund got about 6K NOW THATS A SCREWED UP SYSTEM!!!! Or my ex his wife works low wage job he works for cash partly for EIC & partly to run from childsupport they also got a big refund now that is people screwing the system not the SAHM WHO Just claimed her share of what the gov had to offer