Taxes, Anger, Questions?Follow

Single white male, no dependents...according to the 1040 form, I can claim a whopping personal deduction of $3100 dollars. Subtract that from the 34k I made 2004 *********** of OT) and my fed tax liability is $4400...which is $800 bucks more than I paid in.

Gosh, I luv the tax cuts Georgie gave all us regular, workin' folks.

Anybody wanna loan (possibly in perpetuity) me $800 bucks? ;-)

While this was sound advice (maybe not ethical), this will no longer work, I work for a CPA firm and get RIA Newsletters with tons of information on this topic weekly, I can post a few if you wish.

But anyways, do not do this, please, you are asking to be audited, and then they'll deny your "donation", make you pay the difference and prob charge you a fine and interest. It is considered a loop hole in the tax system and they are removing it completely, not only in Arizona. While you are correct and state it is the last year you can do it, your prob lucky they didnt single you out for previous instances.

By removing it completely I mean the ability to donate a car and then claim its retail value.

Edited, Fri Jan 21 10:30:04 2005 by Kronig

Edited, Fri Jan 21 10:30:25 2005 by Kronig

Keep this hushed up, the statute of limitation for tax evasion does not start until you file. So this can come down on you 20 years from now, likely no, but like murder dont brag about it, remember Capone. But then again if the IRS went after everyone that did tax evasion 90% of the country would be in trouble.

On another side note, funny thing with evasion, even if you fight it in court, it is one of those things you have to prove you are innocent. If you can not prove you are innocent you are automatically guilty.

Actually school credits are onl;y great for the first two years, and that is $1500 max. 100% of the first $1000 and 50% of the second $1000, and nothing after that, and this is for hope. After the first 2 years you are stuck with the lifetime-learning credit is 20% up to $10,000. Now this does have a higher credit allowance, but with the 20% of what is put in does not help a student much, it is ment for mommies and daddies that pay for bubba to go to school. If you only make 5-6k like this poster did the education credits can be more hassel then what they could save. Then again it also depends on what type of work they did and if they had paid taxes on that work, if they did pay taxes then they should of filed since they only owed around $300 and most likely paid more then that through payroll deductions.

Then scholarships complicte this even more since it lowers the amount paid, and is only tax free for what is used for tuition and learning supplies, while you are suppose to pay taxes on any spent on room and board.

Overall looking at the vague numbers, it looks like you are in about 25-30k a year job, this is assuming you claim no dependents on your w-4 and are just talking about federal taxes, I hate states that do income taxes as well. Though your tax base increased dramatically, you should still get a bunch of what you put in back.

Most single people without children dont get much for deductions, and most deductions are ment for people with houses and children any way. This is standard for us single people, just get used to it, or ruin your life and get married early.

If you are concerned about having to pay at the end of the year, keep your w-4 with no deductions, this means they take more out through the year, but in the end it takes a complete ***** up to have to pay.

Do you even know anything about taxes, since this is the stupidest thing I have heard someone say about taxes. The discussion is about income taxes. Federal income taxes only pay for military on your lists. Fire departments and police are funded by local taxes. Roads and bridges are paid for by federal, local, or state taxes depending on their classification.

If you read their complaint they never said anything about sales tax, property tax, gas tax, or sin taxes, which are how most state/local taxes are applied.

Gbaji, as far as I am aware, Social Security and Medicare are not funded by income tax. Which is what the OP is talking about.

Bad numbers from the uninformed. The Defense budget only equals about 1/6th of the total U.S. budget, roughly the same as Welfare.

Huh? That first sentence made no sense.

It all goes into the same bucket though. If you're going to go that route, then you need to calculate how much of Corporate taxes, capital gains taxes, tarrifs, commerce taxes, luxury taxes, "sin" taxes, and a zillion other various forms of Federal Revenue go towards what budget lines.

Ultimately, all that really matters is that the government has an amount of revenue (which it gets from a variety of sources), one of which is income tax. It also has an amount it spends (budget), which consists of a number of line items, one of which is defense. Arguing about which money goes where is silly. I can guarantee you that if there's a shortfall in one area, it'll be taken out of another. You're playing semantics here IMO. Just because generic "income tax" and Social Security tax, and Medicare taxes are separate line items on your tax statement doesn't change the fact that from your perspective they are all a tax on your income.


Also. IIRC, you didn't say that 50% of this income taxes went to defense. You said that 50% of the federal budget went to defense. That's the incorrect statement I was correcting. If you want to argue that we should list the different taxes separately, that's great. I think it's pointless though. From a workers perspective, does it really matter if the taxes are taken out on line 8 or line 12? It's still money taken out of each paycheck, and it's still progressive (the more he earns, the more he pays). I'm reasonably sure that when the OP listed how much the government was taking out of his paycheck, he was not excluding social security and medicare payments. Your response implied that 50% of the money taken out of his paycheck went to defense, and that is absolutely not true no matter how you manipulate the numbers.