<p>I purchased TurboTax 2012 last week and downloaded it and am putting in expected income and other information to get a better picture of what I will be getting back or owing. On the plus side so far, I found that we’re going to get a $150 home energy credit for our new furnace. It also asked if we had put in Windows from 2006-2011 so there’s a possible energy credit there. We did put in windows several years ago so now I have to figure out when that was. I should have emails on it somewhere. I hope that I don’t have to look through credit card receipts as those are paper.</p>
<p>I also did a pro forma for son and he’s getting back a good chunk of change - mainly because I suggested that he go with 0 exemptions to start with.</p>
<p>I think that the AMT and maybe the American Opportunity Credit are still up in the air so I assume that they aren’t including that in the current software yet. If they do get extended for 2012, I assume that TurboTax will get an update for that.</p>
<p>Did you save the stickers from the windows? They have to have a certain efficiency rating to be eligible IIRC.</p>
<p>A number of things have worked against me this year, so I’m already into AMT to the tune of $12,000 or so, and that’s assuming they patch it (my tax program, TaxACT, lets you make that assumption). If they don’t patch it this year, I am screwed. Even if they do patch it, I am still looking at writing a giant check to the IRS.</p>
<p>I did my windows a while ago, so the details are hazy, but IIRC correctly the window has to have a U-factor of 0.35 or lower to be eligible, which is basically level for EnergyStar qualification. If you know the model, googling it should get you all the stats for the window. You might be able to find the model somewhere on the inside of the frame.</p>
<p>The utilities in MA had a mail-in rebate program, you had to mail in the stickers from the windows. That paid a lot more than the energy tax credit, which is capped at $200 for windows.</p>
<p>Congress should abolish AMT and adapt a Buffett Rule tax. I would like that a lot better, since I will never make $1mil in a year. :D</p>
<p>We did a big window job this year. Actually they were doors, French doors, which were mostly window. I didn’t know a credit was even possible. We had a nice credit several years ago when we replaced 2 A/C units + 2 furnaces. But why are we replacing all this stuff on a 15 yr old house?? (roof and gutters too)</p>
<p>BC-have you used Turbo Tax in the past? One thing to keep in mind is that when you pre-enter your information like you did, as changes/updates happen you do need to walk through the program again, depending on the change, to make sure your numbers are correct. We’ve done what you did in the past but when we do our real return we just start a new return from the beginning. It is especially true if there is a glitch in the program. We had this happen a few years ago when it wasn’t recognizing a state specific deduction that made about $2000 difference on our taxes. I had to manually go in and change that.</p>
<p>OHMomof2-I tried the online version and just did NOT like the functionality compared to the CD version (or download version). </p>
<p>I answered several questions on the energy credit interview and it kicked out a tax credit related to the furnace.</p>
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<p>I used it last year. I have been using TaxAct but they really increased the reporting requirements for trading last year and went with TurboTax - it really helped that they have a Mac version.</p>
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<p>Yup. I’m doing that although I’ve entered some of the pro-forma information directly. I’ll have to go through that again when I get the final numbers. Son is no longer a dependent so that’s a fairly big change.</p>
<p>I do not like online versions of tax programs for the following reasons:</p>
<p>1) I don’t like putting personal financial information on the cloud. Yes, a determined hacker or law enforcement person could get my information but I don’t need to make it easier for them.</p>
<p>2) Some web servers have performance problems as you get closer to the deadline. I ran into this once and had to work on my returns at 2:00 AM to get decent performance.</p>
<p>3) I like to be able to go through my returns many years later to check things and it’s nice having them on my computer whenever I want to look at them. It’s unclear to me whether that will be the case with online tax sites. They may have a policy where they only keep them for so many years.</p>
<p>4) I can work on them without an internet connection and performance is a function of my computer; not the network link or server capabilities.</p>
<p>5) I can keep a backup of the return in a secure place.</p>
<p>I do like the convenience of Amazon download so that I can play with it right away. Many new machines don’t come with CD drives so I think that those are going to go away eventually.</p>
<p>Be that as it may, IRC 25C invariably constitutes a more substantial authority than “TurboTax did it that way.”</p>
<p>I suspect that Intuit is hedging its bets, and that the initial release of 2012 is built on a “mostly the same as 2011” platform, on the assumption that we’ll get a late extenders bill. It would not surprise me if we got a retroactive AMT patch covering 2012 and 2013 as late as February, for instance. </p>
<p>In any case, when doing your year-end tax planning, I personally would not advise you to count on getting any energy efficiency credits, other than geothermal / solar (which didn’t expire), until extender legislation is signed into law.</p>
<p>BCEagle your reasons for not doing online make perfect sense to me. But FYI you can save a PDF version of your return in addition to the stored online version.</p>
<p>Here’s a dumb question that I’m really not sure of the answer to, but I know you guys do. So I figure I am going to get totally hosed over on taxes, based on whatever they figure out by the end of the year, there is no way around it. Am I going to be stuck paying that extra 15-20K this April (for 2012 taxes), or next April for 2013 taxes? It’s too late to lower my income for 2012, but I can try to lower it in 2013.</p>
<p>^ We fall off the cliff on January 1, 2013. So most changes will take effect next year (2013), and you will owe on your April 2014 tax return.</p>
<p>The only thing that could affect you this year is if Congress doesn’t do an AMT patch again. If they don’t, a lot of people (tens of millions) who wouldn’t ordinarily have to pay AMT will now be subject to it, and it can cost you thousands of dollars.</p>
<p>Thanks, notrichenough. At least I’ll have another year to save the money.</p>
<p>So if they don’t patch the AMT, but you always get hammered with it anyways, will that raise your taxes? Or will it just add others to join in the misery?</p>
<p>I worked ours the other day. I’m a compulsive tax return worker. I think I have it just about right on the nose this year – maybe a little back, no big drama. It’s helpful always to work it in late spring according to prior year’s Turbo Tax. Gives you plenty of time to tweak withholdings.</p>
<p>This whole fiscal cliff thing needs to get resolved because the poor folks at Turbo may have a lot of revisions to do.</p>