Taxes, Taxes, Taxes!!!

  • Thread starter Thread starter Magic069
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Magic069

Magic069

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So everyone excited about tax time? Meaning is everyone getting a refund this year?

I am excited! I should a nice amount back! Plan to buy some wheels with it.

Anyone have to pay? Ouch! Sorry if you do! :(

I sort of feel your pain, I had to pay $1.87 one year. Thats right I said One dollar, and 87 cents. :odd:
 
I had to pay last year. Something like $700.00. Being married and owning a home for only half the year really screwed us. This year I'm having the inlaws' accountant do it. I can't be bothered with it. But hopefully owning a home for the full year will make a difference this time. And I wish they'd get rid of the marriage penalty instead of just talking about it.
 
The year after we reorganized our finances, we had a lot of capital gains. I had to write Uncle a check for... well, if I'd written it to a Subaru dealer instead I could have had a WRX with all the goodies, including some of the sTi stuff.

Lately though, we've been getting a decent refund, by which I mean ~$1000 US.
 
I always have to end up paying about $100 dollars in taxes this time of year. Although my investments haven't been doing too good his last year:( so I probably won't have to pay as much this year.
 
Last year I think we had to pay like $61 for me...I don't even work but somehow I have to pay...
 
Well, as a wise and funny man once said:

"It's a darn good thing we don't get as much government as we pay for!"
 
Why the hell do you people (except neon_duke) pay so little in taxes? $700? $1.87? $100? Gee whiz! Freaks. But, uh, I'm getting my (or an) accountant to do it this year. He'll do them better than I could, plus, it's his job.

Oh, and Magic - what kind of refund did you get on that $1.87? :)
 
Originally posted by M5Power
Why the hell do you people (except neon_duke) pay so little in taxes? $700? $1.87? $100? Gee whiz! Freaks
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I only pay $100 dollars because i don't work, but I earn enough interest from my bank accounts and some stocks and mutual funds that i own to still have to pay a little bit.
 
Let me put this into perpective for you. When we bought our house last year, we had to pay around $35,000 in stamp duty. This was ON TOP of income taxes.

Can anyone understand why I demand EXTREMELY prompt service from NSW State Government employees - I mean, we practically paid someone's wage last year!
 
I'm actually looking forward to tax time this year. Is anyone here going to use the "Tele-file" system to do there tax return? I'm thinking about it, but I think that I will have a friend of mine at H+R Block take care of me in exchange for some home cooking.
Uncle Sam should be cutting me a check in the $1200 range. I can handle that. But when I see that they almost took $8000 from me last year $1200 doesn't seem like all that much. But hey, I'm not complaining. My folks ended up paying about $20,000 in taxes last year.
 
Originally posted by vat_man
Let me put this into perpective for you. When we bought our house last year, we had to pay around $35,000 in stamp duty. This was ON TOP of income taxes.

Can anyone understand why I demand EXTREMELY prompt service from NSW State Government employees - I mean, we practically paid someone's wage last year!
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Do you pay a yearly "property tax" in Australia, or is that everything upfront? That's a fortune to pay in taxes in the US....I pay ~$1200/yr. in prop taxes, for example.

I'm expecting a whopping $9 back this year (I ought to recoup my TurboTax investment!). The first half of the year, I allowed withholding, the job I'm in right now has no withholding. But I'm not done (I'm lazy right now) because I bought my house last year, still seeing how that works in....FL's homestead exemption and all.
 
Originally posted by M5Power


Oh, and Magic - what kind of refund did you get on that $1.87? :)
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No thats what I owed the IRS once, I didn't get a refund on anything!

I am expecting a pretty nice tax return this year! Made good money, and attended school full time. (Helps out a lot) Plus I am going to try to deduct my tolls paid to drive to school! :D
 
I haven't filed mine yet, but my mom gives me half of what she gets, because she claims my kids. And she claimed me this year, since I'm a fulltime student. Most of it is going towards bills, but I'm putting some aside for me, too :D
 
Originally posted by pupik
Do you pay a yearly "property tax" in Australia, or is that everything upfront? That's a fortune to pay in taxes in the US....I pay ~$1200/yr. in prop taxes, for example.

I'm expecting a whopping $9 back this year (I ought to recoup my TurboTax investment!). The first half of the year, I allowed withholding, the job I'm in right now has no withholding. But I'm not done (I'm lazy right now) because I bought my house last year, still seeing how that works in....FL's homestead exemption and all.
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Well, property tax is a state-by-state thing. There is a year-by-year property tax in NSW, but the land (without improvements) needs to be worth more than about $1.6 million or so if it's your primary residence (the threshold's lower for rental and secondary residential property), so it's pretty uncommon for people to pay it.

Stamp Duty (our UK members are probably more familiar with it) is generally a 'transaction' tax here, and is paid on anything the state government might monitor registers of ownership of - stuff like property, cars, leases, mortgages, that sort of thing.

Like most taxes, it's generally seen as a pain in the arse.
 
Originally posted by M5Power
Pfft, you're a liberal - you love paying taxes. :)
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Well, I have a theory on Stamp Duty in NSW.

Since it's an upfront requirement (i.e. you can't finance it, you have to cough up the money on top of your deposit), I contend that if you remove it, the following will happen (bear with me, the logic's a little complex).

Since you no longer have to find a large sum of cash up front, then under the concept of present value, if you think of the large lump sum as the present value of a stream of payments, you'd be prepared to pay extra each month on top of your mortgage in place of the upfront tax payment - e.g. you'd pay an extra $654 a month on your mortgage a month to avoid a $10,000 payment at the start.

On this basis, I believe that if they abolished stamp duty, then the value of a $700,000 house in Sydney would go up by about $100-150,000 overnight.

So, having paid this tax, I am of course now in favour of dropping it.

I don't have that much of an issue with well-planned taxes. Unfortunately, taxes are the price of civilised government, and as much as we'd be loathe to admit it, the government's not actually that bad - compare it to places like Afghanistan, Iraq, heck, even Russia, and you've got to admit things are pretty good.

I do have an issue with taxes on fixed assets - like a property tax - which kicks in through increases in property values. If you own your property, you should only have to pay for services to it, you should not be worried that one day, thanks to the market deciding your land is great, you might have to pay tax on it - that's unfair.

As I've mentioned in other threads, I think consumption type taxes, like sales tax and the GST here in Australia and New Zealand, is a much smarter form of taxation for modern economies.
 
Originally posted by vat_man
Stamp Duty (our UK members are probably more familiar with it) is generally a 'transaction' tax here, and is paid on anything the state government might monitor registers of ownership of - stuff like property, cars, leases, mortgages, that sort of thing.

Like most taxes, it's generally seen as a pain in the arse.
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Indeed. Here, stamp duty is paid by the buyer, and is 1% of the value of the house, if that value is less than £250,000. After which it jumps to (I think) 3%. This means that you see a lot of houses for sale at £249,995!

It does kind of hurt...

We also pay "Council Tax", which is a tax on the value of the property and is payable annually. Notionally it goes to pay for local Council services such as schooling and refuse collection. For that, we get one unsorted refuse collection per week, of a small wheelie bin. We have a measly street light out in front of the house which doesn't light anything. We also (and this is only the case for Scotland) get our Water and sewerage included. However, my council tax is in excess of £100 per month, so I really don't feel that I'm getting value for money.
 
yay i get tax back on the 70ishhours of work i did during the holidays........cause im under 16.....NZ law is sweet.

Wonder how much i'll get....................................................................................
 

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