I stayed up kind of late last night and finished off our taxes. I hadn't been able to take more than cursory glances at them since I got the last of the paperwork, and every time I did I got a wildly different estimate. So sitting down and reading through everything, double-checking numbers and all, I was pleasantly surprised that instead of owing about $300 (the worst of my rough estimates), we will be getting just over $2000 back.
What did I do wrong the other time I estimated? Forgot about the MN marriage credit, didn't factor in the portion of AS's education that was taxed as income (and therefore could get us a tax break), underestimated taxes NT and I paid in '08 (I only counted withholdings and forgot to add what we owed last year), and forgot to carry the 1 in one of my scribbled equations, a $1000 error.
$2000 seems like a reasonable cushion for three people, especially since I did owe something to MN, so I don't think I'll change my withholdings (unless there's a way to increase MN withholding only). I don't mind owing taxes but I hate the possibility of penalties if you owe too much, so I'd rather play it safe.
Still trying to decide what to do with the money. We've been saving for a couch, so I may use about $250 to pay for that, and I think a small cash bonus of spending money would be much appreciated by the family. We've decided we want to do two days of outside-of-Vegas sightseeing rather than one, so I'll put about $60 in to cover an additional day of car rental, insurance and gas. I think those are the only things we want that we haven't already paid for, so the rest will probably go to the baby/emergency fund.
Taxes almost done
February 4th, 2009 at 10:55 pm
February 4th, 2009 at 11:26 pm 1233790017
February 5th, 2009 at 05:31 am 1233811870
February 5th, 2009 at 03:09 pm 1233846589
cptacek, you got it. In the eyes of the U.S. government, NT and I are married and AS is single, so we file a joint married return and I prepare a single return for AS. Her tuition goes on that. All the things I mentioned above factored into my wrong estimates, but on different returns.
February 5th, 2009 at 04:32 pm 1233851571
February 5th, 2009 at 04:37 pm 1233851854