Have you done your taxes yet?!

Well our accountant just called this morning.. and it wasnt good at all.. atleast for me.. FI is getting a nice return, but for me.. I owe. I just dont get it. However, she did mention that for next year, I may want to consider having a kid or buying a house..lol..

Well our accountant just called this morning.. and it wasnt good at all.. atleast for me.. FI is getting a nice return, but for me.. I owe. I just dont get it. However, she did mention that for next year, I may want to consider having a kid or buying a house..lol..

We filed a couple weeks ago and we ended up getting $800 more back for filing jointly. We ended up getting a big refund which we really needed for our moving expenses to AZ. We have an accountant do ours and he only charges $100 so to us it is worth it.

Jessica ~ do you and your FI have different withholding allowances on your W-4? If he has 0 and you don't, then he'll probably always get more back. But your CPA was right about the house. You can deduct all the interest you pay on your mortgage, which is most of your monthly payment and really adds up over the course of the year!

 

For all of you who are owing a lot, you might want to look at the W-4 calculator to see what they recommend that you have withheld. You'll get less in your pocket in every pay check, but at the end of the year, you won't get stuck with a big bill to the government. Plus, they can hit you with penalties and interest fees if you're under withholding.

 

IRS Withholding Calculator

I am an accountant and am right in the middle of doing a lot of returns! But just wanted to say hi, and say that if you have straight forward tax situations, it does make sense to just prepare them yourself. (Unless you'd rather just pay for the convenience). Our firm does not do any returns that are straight forward because it doesn't make sense to ask people to pay for that. That being said though, the cheapest return I prepared last year was $1,900, so these people have complicated situations.

 

If anyone has any questions though, because they are preparing taxes themselves, feel free to post and I will try and reply!

Lori, how different are Canada's tax filings from the US's? I've never actually seen anything on them.

They are quite different. I do mostly US personal tax though.

Sapphire,

Yep, we both have 0. Funny thing is that I was the who told him to put 0 instead of 1. I will put more into my IRA, or put it in FSA (they pay for BC, pillows(allergies), etc) for things I know I spend $$ on, or withhold additional money. What I didnt get is that I made more this year, so I thought I would have gotten more or atleast close to last year.. but oh well it could always be worse.

My FI and I have been filing our taxes together as commonlaw for the last couple of years. We are both in the higher tax bracket, but thanks to living in Northern Canada we get perks like Northern living allowance and we get to write off a couple of vacations each!

Yeah that's the one good thing about moving! You can write it off!!