<p>What tasty bottle of red wine costs only $10? I sniff a bargain that I need to know.</p>
<p>“I am reading your posts and paying an additional 16,000 or so in taxes is upsetting you. So quit. Fine. Somebody will take your hours. You will pay less in taxes. You will have a lot less money too.”</p>
<p>Yes, that does upset me, mostly because it’s not to fix anything, it’s just on principle. It is not to decrease the deficit, there are no cuts. And actually, I’m not accounting for all the extra taxes like the rise in medicare taxes, increase in social security tax, and health care taxes. It will be significantly higher than just 16K for me. But why do you continue to say “quit”, because of course, that is quite impossible. We can’t live on zero, and no health insurance. My plan is to work a lot less, and that will lower our taxes. You could afford to quit, but we don’t have enough money saved, and we are too young to quit.</p>
<p>It is not an honor to make enough that the govt puts a confiscatory rate on your taxes. Just ask those in France. There is a balance between working enough to be able to take care of yourself, and just working extra to pay taxes.</p>
<p>“What tasty bottle of red wine costs only $10? I sniff a bargain that I need to know.”</p>
<p>Oh, there are plenty of tasty bottles around $10, that’s for sure. I’m only looking at red, though. Anything Charles Smith (House Wine), Menage A Trois, many of the Costco wines are great deals. I think there are some threads on this, and if I wasn’t on my second glass I could come up with a great list. But here is my favorite deal. Lately on zagatwines.com, they had a deal for $69.99 (I think), for 15 bottles of really, really good wine. You have to sign up for their wine club, but you can quit at any time. And then you can sign you spouse up for the same deal (all you need is a different email address), and then quit. Okay, I know, sounds cheap, but man…really great wine for such a price. Even at their full price, the wine is a sweet deal because it is so good.</p>
<p>We don’t have the same tax rates as France. People who live in France are happy people. Look it up.
Edit…ok…I looked it up. Maybe the French aren’t that happy. :)</p>
<p>I don’t know how you are in real life but, you don’t have to be upset about the taxes. That is a waste of energy. That is your choice. You could concentrate on the fact that your family income is in the top 99 percent of all American households. That’s cool. Your after tax income is still very high…even with the tax increases.</p>
<p>I didn’t say both your husband and you should quit. You can quit. Or your husband can quit. Or one or both of you can ask to work fewer hours, if possible.</p>
<p>It’s up to you. I think there are many families that would love to be in your financial situation.</p>
<p>Nah, I don’t think the French people that are having to pay 75% in taxes are too happy. Nor are the large numbers of unemployed.</p>
<p>I’m not really that upset, I’m annoyed. I had this ridiculous assumption that if taxes were going up, that it would be for some particular purpose that was actually useful, like reducing the deficit, as opposed to just because…It is not helpful to me to concentrate on what percentage our income rate is in. It does not make me feel superior or happy or entitled. It is purely because both of us work for a successful company, and that’s it. We do intend to work fewer hours. I don’t think one or the other of us could just outright quit. It took us 30 years to get here, and we can’t just restart our careers at minimum wage if we decided we made a mistake.</p>
<p>Are your taxes going up?</p>
<p>Very little…so far…
My income is going down.</p>
<p>But really, truthfully, I never cared about the taxes. I am not just making this stuff up. I always concentrated on the after tax money, not the gross income.</p>
<p>There is more to life than taxes. Your son just got a great job in a great city. That is way more important than taxes. Congrats by the way.</p>
<p>" It took us 30 years to get here, and we can’t just restart our careers at minimum wage if we decided we made a mistake."</p>
<p>I understand.</p>
<p>I never paid much attention to taxes until the last few years at tax time, we had to come up with these overwhelming checks that we had to borrow money for. Obviously we need an accountant, because I think I’m doing a crummy job with turbotax.</p>
<p>Thanks for the congrats. My son is really happy, and not just for the job (for which the state of New York is going to tax the daylights out of), as you say, there is much more to life than taxes. And money. But he’s having more social contact and busier with competitions and activities than ever. If only we can talk him into a wife. I need grandchildren.</p>
<p>Some day you will have grandchildren. It is nice that your son is having a nice time.</p>
<p>It is so incredibly nice. He was very introverted most of his life and now he has found his niche. So many years of parental worry and stress, and now he is busy doing fun things all of the time. The things that most parents take for granted are bringing us endless joy. Life is good, so yeah, why worry about how we are going to find money for more taxes?</p>
<p>That’s right. Life is good. </p>
<p>Have a good night.</p>
<p>Tax rates—after a lengthy lay off from work a few years ago, my DH found a job that was a pretty big pay cut for him. We managed but it was TIGHT, very tight. He has since gotten a significant raise. Our AGI this year is almost double what it was last year. Here is the kicker though, our TAXES have gone up 5 TIMES what they were last year, 5 TIMES. Stop whining about the tax rates you have now, thanks :D.</p>
<p>Yes, we are thankful for the job and the raise was a blessing and I am even more glad that Congress did the right thing or our tax situation would be even worse!</p>
<p>Son got a professional job this year so it was a nice welcome to the real world and that includes paying taxes. It’s not a real problem for him though as he doesn’t spend money.</p>
<p>On taxes - you get used to them - whether they go up or down. It may take a year or two but it just becomes the new normal. Most of the people here should have been through a few major tax bill changes.</p>
<p>It would be nice if the country could do something about spending but there’s nothing that I can do to directly affect that so I don’t worry about that [well, maybe a little]. I focus on making as much as I can, then saving a good chunk of that and spending a little here and there and giving some of it away.</p>
<p>TurboTax did get some updates - I’m able to work on a section that I wasn’t able to a few weeks ago. I will keep checking for updates. I should be able to put in the real amounts for my job info. I need to check on W-2s too. I have a feeling that they won’t arrive early - but I’ll check our online payroll system.</p>
<p>I believe the PEP and PEAS amendment are being reinstated and will significantly impact deductions for those earning over 250k. This is what I’m getting from reading various news sources.</p>
<p>The rate issue will appease the masses but those “rich” around 200-250k will feel a significant increase, it looks like.</p>
<p>Also payroll taxes for those earners will jump more, as the Obamacare payroll tax is means tested at 200k.</p>
<p>I am glad we significantly increased my spouse’s deferred income for 2013.</p>
<p>I had a look at my final paystub and it’s pretty confusing though I think that my estimates are pretty accurate. There are several items that I’m unsure of so I guess that I’ll have to wait until the end of the month to get the W-2. It would be nice to start on interest and dividends too. My wife got our foreign interest information the last few nights with phone calls to overseas banks (some of these send out statements based on a July - June fiscal year). I can do our interest stuff but not the dividends stuff without some work because there are foreign taxes withheld. There may be margin expenses and I usually wind up with miscellaneous expenses (I generally don’t bother to look into these because they are fairly small).</p>
<p>I will have to send the State of NH a check because I likely didn’t withhold enough (I usually leave a credit balance with them but it wasn’t enough this year). I have until January 15th to send them a check if I owe more than a certain percentage. NH doesn’t have a general income tax but it does have a 5% Interest and Dividends tax. I can certainly live with that. It provides an incentive to go for capital gains but going for growth is more work than sitting back and watching the income roll in.</p>
<p>I don’t really ever find doing our taxes that complicated. Twice we’ve brought in a tax accountant and both times I ended up finding errors in their work. The last one told me I had a very detailed mind for accounting.</p>
<p>No one really has the attention span for your taxes that you have.</p>
<p>I think if we ran a business it would be different and we’d probably need to use an accountant.</p>
<p>The messy parts can be where a financial institution makes a mistake and you have to decide whether or not you want to get them to fix it, issue corrections and file late or whether you’ll just eat the taxes because it isn’t worth the time and bother to try to get an institution to try to fix something. Foreign income can be a headache too.</p>
<p>I still have to file some forms to my brokerages to keep the withheld taxes on Canadian dividend stocks at 15%. They go up to 25% if you don’t fill out the form. I filled it out for one brokerage. I have to fill it out for another one and get my wife to fill out the forms for both for our joint accounts.</p>
<p>MLPs can be a pain on taxes.</p>
<p>The software does make everything easier though.</p>
<p>sewhappy–I used to have my own business. Even then, my taxes were not any more complicated then they are now. I used Turbo Tax. The biggest thing was just keeping track of everything, receipts, etc. I used Quickbooks and everything just “transferred” into Turbo Tax. We used an accountant twice but both times I used Turbo Tax before working with the accountant and came up with the same numbers.</p>
<p>Just had a look at my son’s paycheck deposit amount. I was hoping that it would have some indication of 2013 payroll taxes. They did his last paycheck on Monday instead of the normal Wednesday. So no 2013 data yet. I always wondered about how you do the taxes on paychecks - whether it’s for the pay period or the date of the check.</p>
<p>Working on payroll systems can’t be fun these days.</p>