<p>I’ve started my taxes and am struggling. Right now I owe a lot of money.</p>
<p>I used to wait and then file an extension and then do it over the summer. The timing of taxes has always been bad for us as we’re typically busy at that time of the year. I’m a lot more proactive gathering things and doing estimates before the end of the year and software helps out a lot.</p>
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<p>yes, yes, yes. The only thing different was that we converted our 401k to Roth this year. And yet our tax is lower this year as if the conversion is not taxable.</p>
<p>BCE - I don’t like filing extensions. For me, it’s like doing the taxes twice.</p>
<p>If your income was exactly the same in 2012 compared to 2011… Your taxes will be lower in 2012. Brackets are adjusted for inflation. The amt is adjusted too.</p>
<p>Because of the roth conversion, isn’t your income really higher in 2012?</p>
<p>How can your income be similar when you have a roth conversion in 2012?</p>
<p>Is Turbo Tax including the conversion in your AGI? If not, something is coded incorrectly.</p>
<p>I didn’t like filing extensions too - it was a few years of repeated procrastination. Life is less hectic now with one launched and the other using little of my resources and the software. It’s a bad habit but sometimes you feel like it’s what you have to do. Same thing with waiting for the last minute. It’s a real headache on spouses because the pressure builds.</p>
<p>Supposedly filing an extension lowers your chances of being audited, and many people file extensions just for that reason.</p>
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Right there with you, DocT. :eek:</p>
<p>I don’t really worry about getting audited but I can understand if a lot of people with small businesses are queasy about getting targeted.</p>
<p>Can you handle what you owe? How did it happen? Unexpected gains or other income?</p>
<p>When I got laid off, I received a nice severance package and cashed in 5 weeks of vacation. So I wound up making quite bit more for the year than I would have made if I hadn’t been laid off, and had less in the way of 401k and insurance deductions.</p>
<p>I got the max in unemployment, which doesn’t have taxes withheld for some reason. I had to exercise my ISOs before they expired, which put me deep in AMT hell with no taxes withheld. Had to exercise all my other options as well, for which taxes were withheld, but not enough.</p>
<p>Refinancing all of my rentals at ridiculous rates, combined with fewer than expected repairs, fewer than expected vacancies, and the mild winter last year, put most of them in the black even after depreciation. Unexpected but I’m not complaining. :)</p>
<p>And to top it off, DW is self-employed and had a very good year. Usually I mess around with my withholding to cover her taxes, but since I wasn’t employed…</p>
<p>I have the money to pay my tab, it’s just really unpleasant to write that large of a check to the IRS. :D</p>
<p>Fidelity was ready with 1099s one day early (after being two weeks late). So I imported everything hoping that it wouldn’t overwrite the stuff that I already imported and worked on. But it did. So I exited without saving and reimported just the four forms for one account. It flagged four calls that didn’t have a buy date and price. I guess that those expired worthless. I have to see if I can enter zero in there or otherwise indicate a cost basis of 0.</p>
<p>I guess that it’s a nice problem to have.</p>
<p>I had everything done on the Federal and was about to do the NH.</p>
<p>Then Fidelity sends me an email with a corrected 1099 on my most complicated brokerage account. The correction is an ordinary distribution that is now a non-dividend distribution which should save me about $60 in taxes. Now part of me just wants me to hand in the current return but then I couldn’t sign the form. So I will probably have to delete all of my entries for that account and reimport everything from Fidelity and redo the Q&A for all of those entries. For $60.</p>
<p>^^Well, if it takes an hour, I guess you could look at it like you are getting paid $60 for the hour, which is better than most jobs. Plus you can do it in your pajamas, drinking a glass of wine. Though it would be tempting to just let it go, because of the hassle.</p>
<p>The IRS sent me a letter asking to send paperwork for my mortgage deductions for two years ago, every month. It was rather complicated, as I had two different mortgages and two HELOCs. I had to show proof of and send 12 months of statements for a HELOC that was a worth a $2.20 deduction. I think I figured it wrong and wrote off all the interest of $4.41. Wonder what kind of penalty they’re going to give me for that $2.21 error.</p>
<p>I figure that submitting the current numbers would result in their computers figuring the right amount and them sending me a bigger refund check as it would be an error in my favor according to what I read about the documentation.</p>
<p>Definitely worth it to get a bigger refund.</p>
<p>One other thing about Fidelity - they delete the previous statement from your online records when they issue a corrected statement. This can make it a pain in the neck to compare what they had before to what you have now so that you can consider editing one or two things instead of re-importing everything over again.</p>
<p>That’s why I put my statements into my electronic notebook. I was able to just pull up the old tax statement in my electronic notebook and compare it to the new one. I also added the new statement to my notebook.</p>
<p>You know, I’m pretty sure that it was Fidelity that sent us a statement about our kids accounts recently. That they had sent their tax statement to the wrong customer, and they would be sending us a new one. I got the feeling they were sending out many of these letters. Seems like a little bit late in the game to be sending this out.</p>
<p>Fidelity should not be deleting old statements from your records so quickly. It sounds like they almost don’t want you to notice they messed up in the first place.</p>
<p>I think that most online companies are doing that. I had something similar happen with Discover - I cancelled a card and all of the online statements for that card were no longer available.</p>
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Didn’t you get 1098’s for this interest? You shouldn’t have to figure out your own interest. The banks provide that information and send a copy to the IRS.</p>
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Not going to happen. Was the basis even sent to the IRS? It’s not always. Matter of fact, it’s very recent that any basis is reported to the IRS.</p>
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<p>I didn’t get 1099-INT forms from a credit union and a landlord. The amount of interest that they paid was apparently under the threshold where they had to file the forms.</p>