Up until this morning our town was requiring it be paid in person. They changed it while I was in line to allow for check to be put the drop box or mailed postmarked before Dec. 31st. I stayed in line because I wanted a receipt with “Paid in Full” and stamped with today’s date.
I spent the time listening to a podcast and chatting with a few people I hadn’t seen in awhile.
So I should just do all of my tax payment deductions…right? Because it won’t make any difference.
We have NEVER been subject to AMT in the past. Not once. Income for 2017 will be a tad higher than 2016, but not nearly as high as 2015. No AMT in any of these previous years.
Thank you, @notrichenough. The explanations definitely help.
@notrichenough, I had to google YMMV and IANNA since I am from the stone age!!
I knew I could go back and look at Form 6251 from 2016, however I didn’t want to, tax forms always give me headaches. But since you kind of nudging, so I did. Looks like I am stuck with AMT.
Now I just have to figure out what amount to send in for the last quarter 2017 federal and state estimated income tax! 
Never heard of IANNA.
We’ve only had AMT once or twice and it really didn’t change our taxes much anyway. Our city hasn’t said anything about prepaying property taxes by sends a bill in two parts in July—you can pay Aug and Feb both before 12/31/2017 and that’s about it.
Compared to the property tax bills many here are discussing ours are generally significantly lower anyway.
They just sent the valuations out for 2018 and people can still challenge the appraisals.
IANAA = I Am Not An Account, similar to the more common IANAL (I Am Not A Lawyer)
Then if your SALT deductions will hit the $10,000 cap in 2018, it is definitely to your advantage to prepay some/all of your property tax. You have to do the math to see how much this will save you and if it triggers AMT.
The problem is that you have to compare including it 2017 to including it in 2018, and I’m not entirely sure we will have a clear handle on the calculations for 2018 by this April.
@sylvan8798, I am positive that we will be forced to use the new standard deduction of $24k for 2018 since they cap the state income tax and property tax to $10k, then we likely won’t be subjected to AMT in 2018 since there won’t be any more Schedule A.
Btw, how do you guys do the “box” thing to quote other CCer’s comments???
You surround the quoted text with tags that tell it to put the text in a quote box. Like this:
[quote]
Put quoted text here
[/quote]
This gives you
ooh, yellow background. nice
The yellow background is a side effect of using the “code” tag, which is the only way I know of to have tags show up as text and not get interpreted as tags.
You can also add the author:
[quote=Chardo]
ooh, yellow background. nice
[/quote]
which gives you
We’re able to pay property taxes (and mortgage) online with echecks directly out of the account, no charge. So I paid the balance of our 2017 property taxes (not due until February) and the January mortgage comfortably from home. (Although it is 70 degrees right now in sunny San Diego.) 2018 property taxes are not yet assessed so no prepay possible.
For those wondering…my partially self employed son DOES do a schedule C. Our understanding is nothing has changed with regards to the deductions taken on a schedule C.
Is that correct?
^ That’s my understanding.
If he is single and makes less than $157,500 (which I am guessing he does, he is a musician after all 
), he will be able to deduct 20% of his self-employment income from his taxable income, although I don’t think this will be a schedule C deduction because the 20% deduction is not supposed to affect AGI.
He makes about $42,000 a year…and about $10,000 of that is his self employed income. The remainder is w2 income. He has a good amount of deductions for his self employed part.
Houston area has online property tax payment also. I did it alll last night. Our bill is not as high as the NE and there was no assessment to even consider prepaying 2018.
So my burning question what is it worth to prepay January’s mortgage of $2200?
We pay on Jan 3rd anyway and have the $ available now. How do I figure out what one payment is worth
on the 2018 taxes?
If your 2018 mortgage interest plus SALT will not exceed the new $24K standard deduction, you should move it into 2017 to get at least some benefit. If your mortgage interest is over $14K, you might still find it beneficial to move the payment into 2017 since the tax brackets will be lower in 2018, but that one is a closer question.
My understanding is it depends on whether u should still be using itemized deduction in 2018. If u will use itemized deduction in 2017, how much mortgage interest do u expect to pay in 2018? If adding up ur salt+mortgage interest+donation and the amount is greater than 24,000, then there is no need to pay ur January mortgage ahead of time, because u will still be using itemized deduction in 2018. OTOH, if the amount is less, then pay extra amount in 2017 might save u a bit for tax year 2017 using itemized deduction while u will be using standard deductions in 2018.
We usually owe several hundred dollars on our state return, so we sent off the check now instead of in April. Also paid property taxes, just in case some further clarification comes through. Otherwise, our PITI payment will just be lower starting in July since we’ll have already paid taxes. Our mortgage interest is pretty low at this point since we’re about seven years from payoff. OTOH, our blue state taxes are high.
@oregon101, we get a monthly statement from our mortgage provider with the principal, interest and tax escrow figures. That’s where I’d get the number, but if you call your mortgage servicer, you can probably get it pretty easily.