I am a planner. I never said I was good at following through with my plans (quite the contrary LOL) but I do like to plan. I like to know the possibilities of what will happen in the future so there aren’t any surprises. One thing I like to plan for is how quickly I’ll be getting our taxes filed in order to get a credit, or how long I can delay buying the software because we’ll be owing Uncle Sam.
I can make a plan because Turbo Tax and H & R Block both offer free online tax programs where I can quickly and easily enter information from our W-2s and see how the tax situation looks. My favorite program is TurboTax. It’s really straightforward and very explanatory about what information I need. Truly the hardest part about tax time is gathering up the paperwork!
To use the free online version to see how big the return is or if we’ll owe taxes, I basically just fill in the information from our W-2s. I don’t take the time to plug in all of our deductions, because I know that we’ll owe less (or get more back) than it says once all the deductions are considered. If we are going to owe taxes I’ll wait until late March to buy the software (state returns aren’t free), giving me plenty of time to look for deals. I can usually find one through one of the online cashback sites that I use. If I don’t ever find a deal, I’ll continue the free return that I started (we almost always have to use a paid version due to deductions and out of state tax issues) We’ve only owed taxes 2 years- One year we owed less than $100, and another year we owed nearly $2,000! I was very glad that I took the time to plug things in early on so that we could plan on paying that $2,000 for 3 months.
Most years we get a hefty return. We’ve had job changes or dependent changes almost every year for the past 12 years so we have yet to get our witholding stabilized. I’ll be plugging in our information next week to double check that we’re getting a refund and hopefully everything will be finished by the end of February so we’ll get our refund quickly. I hope to put most of the refund toward purchasing a new to us car for hubby. What plans do you have for your tax refund?
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