Hellobee Boards

I voted no, but because it was too much. I would have rather had that money throughout the year and earned interest on it. We need to adjust our withholdings.

I was ok with it! We got almost double what we got last year, thanks LO! but we didn't get crap last year so anything was better!

None of these options really apply. We aim to get as close to net 0 as possible. I don't like to owe since of course I hate to shell out more cash. But we don't like to get a lot back either and give the government a free loan while I could have been earning interest on it or had it invested. We're ok with it however it comes out, paying it now or later or getting it back is all the same at the end of the day. If anything, I prefer to owe a little.

Didn't vote because we haven't done our taxes yet...

@kiddosc: yes, this is what happened to us.

We didn't get as much as I thought, but I guess that means we're withholding the correct amount!

@PurplePumps: well put although I prefer to get a tiny bit back.

I think it's funny when people get so excited to get money back. Um - you were excited you gave the government too much of your money??

This was first year in 3 years that we didn't owe, so happy about that! Itty bitty refund though

I mean, it's never as much as you want it to be, but we didn't owe anything this year.

Oh this depressing time of year.

DH and I always did our own returns and got tax refunds when we were single, but since we got married and started a business on top of our day jobs, we always owe. A lot. It sucks because we make a high income, but we have staggering amounts of law school debt, so we really don't see any of the extra money.

So we live tightly budgeted on like 22% of our income, put all our spare money towards loans, pay up the nose for taxes, don't get to claim student loan interest or use Roth IRAs because we make too much money, and then pay our accountant $2000 a year to minimize our tax liability as much as possible. Sigh.

At least we'll be able to claim a dependent once I have this baby.

@MrsH: I don't mind giving the government too much as long as I get it back. Our tax situation is really complicated because I technically own two small businesses and work and home and between that and loans and other random deductions, it is REALLY hard to figure how much we'll owe each year. Owing would really bum me out so I'd always rather be safe and pay more and then get a refund.

This year our refund was particularly good because our state passed a law we didn't anticipate that reduced tax liabilities for small business by 50%. So that was an excellent bump in our refund we didn't expect.

Also, even if we somehow were somehow able to know exactly how much we'd owe-- say we have another $400/month and then no refund. Realistically we might put 200 or 300 of that in savings but we'd probably incorporate 100-200/month into our usual spending because we keep a pretty tight budget generally and it would feel like "ehhh why not loosen up a bit and have a little more fun." Doing it this way all that money was saved for us and its much easier to drop it as a lump sum into savings/debt reduction, so we really come out ahead of where we would've been anyways had it been possible to know for sure how much we'd owe.

@MrsH: what I get stressed about is deducting too much, then being in the position where you might not get any of that money back, like the IOUs in the state of California. Believe me, I like to keep my money in my bank account, but this past year, we didn't have the right deductions.

@LindsayInNY: We always owe 5 figures. My husbands bonus always kills us. We also got hit hard by the new taxes that came out of Obama care.

@mrs. bird: @snowjewelz: @gingerbebe: Ugh. Loans. We have loans in the 6 figures (thank you law school). I figured out a few months ago that if we keep chugging along on them as we have been they'll finally be all paid off about 9 months before our LO starts college. Did I mention-- ugh?!

No, we sold our house last year and had to pay quite a bit for the profit from the house (even though we didn't make much profit at all - not even enough to cover 3.5% of a down payment on our next house that we had to buy).

Along with that, our CPA said that our child deductions were $1500 less this year per LO. DH made a little more so we are in the next tax bracket (which, trust me, I would rather be in). We barely got anything back this year.

@gingerbebe: that is AMAZING if you can get them all paid off that soon! We talked about trying to really aggressively pay them down but I work in a small firm and my husband is an accountant (although unfortunately not the kind that handles taxes, so we still have to pay someone to do ours lol) so realistically if we lived like paupers it would still take us almost 10 years to pay them all off and we just weren't willing to delay all our other goals and our quality if life for THAT long to get it done. We have paid off everything except the mortgage and student loans though and we'll have 2 of the 4 loans paid off in 10 years (which comes up in 2018-- cannot WAIT) which was sort of the compromise. We still get to have a pretty good quality of life and are saving for emergencies and retirement and we're not paying AS much interest as we could be on our loans if we did all of them over 25 years… but we just sort of accept that loan payments are going to be a part of life for a really long time.

@Mae: Yeah, we basically just bit the bullet. If it wasn't for getting pregnant and having the reduction in income from maternity leave and what not, I think mine would have been paid off a year from now (we started this crackpot plan last year). Right now, we're putting everything we have towards mine so we can at least get rid of one monthly payment, but we'll probably still be paying on mine until the end of 2015 at least with the baby. DH's loans we're hoping to be done 2-3 years after mine, but that assumes I keep working and we get regular increases in salary. I think the only reason we can stick with it is because we can't afford to do the 10 year repayment on both our loans and the 30 year payment is just insane from an interest standpoint. So for us, it was either buckling down for 5 years or pay a huge monthly payment on DH's loans for 30 years. It just wasn't worth it.

Yup, we got more money than we expected and I'm happy/ thrilled with it. As someone who isn't the best saver, I like looking forward to that refund. (We do have 'forgotten' savings like ING that saves for us.) I don't know the amount I get every year, so I don't spend that refund before I receive it. I know others don't want to give the government an interest free loan, but I don't care. I like that money away from my eyes. We might use if, if I see it. Shoot, I got a bonus for work around the same time that I filed my taxes and most of my bonus went to taxes. I was shocked and bummed. So my tax return sorta made up for the bonus. At least in my head and my savings account where it is sitting.

DH's job did change and we had no idea what to expect tax wise so we did withhold a little more so we wouldn't owe.

@babyjmama: there's a calculator on the IRS website which you can use to determine your withholdings for payroll purposes.