Did you get a tax cut last year?

[Immanuel]

Comparing taxes for a similar gross, I saw about $300 less in taxes this year plus the $800 Making Work Pay credit

Thank you. So if I am reading you right, then you saw an $1,100 improvement this year.

Can you think of anything that might have changed over the year?

Immie

 

[rightwinger]

In comparing the tax tables for 2008 and 2009

2008 $100,000 (married filing jointly) $17,681
2009 $100,000 (married filing jointly) $17,369

$312 less tax in 2009

 

[Care4all]

Yes, but he increased the taxes we paid before he gave us this spectacular tax cut. Well, geez, thank you so very much Mr. President for pissing on me and telling me it was raining.

Immie

And when Bush sent out those $300 rebate checks and depleted the surplus, that was the greatest thing ever wasn't it.

As debunked SO many times.. there was no motherfucking surplus, so stop trying to re-spread the myth

if there was not a 5.6 trillion dollar projected surplus, then there is no 12 trillion dollar projected deficits for Obama....is that what you are saying Dave....that CBO projections of surplus or deficits, don't count?

There was a $5.6 trillion dollar 10 year projected budget surplus, that was the social security tax surplus...and we did collect those surplus social security taxes and we did use them to pay for what income taxes should have been paying for....instead of collecting income taxes to pay the general bills, we gave tax cuts for income tax payers, and TOOK the SS surplus money and used it to pay the general bills....sure, people wil say, we just borrowed it from social security payers...we gave them an iou.

 

[Ravi]

I got smacked with the AMT last year...but somehow I still payed a smaller percentage on balance than last year. Must have been the deductions.

 

[Skull Pilot]

I made more this year than last but only paid a little more in taxes $63 to be exact.

It had nothing to do with Obama though.

See I did a real tricky thing and started running a lot of what would have been taxable income through a management company and then was able to write off all kinds of property repairs and renovations that I wouldn't have been able to last year. I did some additional renovations on the barn (new siding, insulation and it's now partially heated and air conditioned) and now i rent a climate controlled storage unit to the business and we finished our home gym (also in the barn) which I then get 300 a month from our business and write it off as an employee health club benefit.

Then I opened another 401k for the management group and dumped all that income into it avoiding all kinds of income taxes.

cool huh?

 

[Care4all]

Matthew and I earned $100 bucks more this year than last year...which is just pitiful, but the corporation he works for gave NO RAISES last year, and so far no raises this year either, and our tax savings was $826 bucks.

$26 less on the tax rate and
$250 check matt got as a stimulus check from the VA, and $550 back on make working pay credit for the two of us. the $250 got taken out of the the $800 so for the make work pay credit it was $550 for us.

 

[Polk]

The $800 Making Work Pay Credit was supposed to be the tax cut. But, what Obama neglected to tell us is that the tax brackets were not adjusted down by this amount so at the end of the year your tax burden didn't change by this amount. Basically it was a short term loan from our government. We all had to pay it back (either by actually paying more or by getting less of a refund) when we filed our 2009 tax returns.

Rick

That's simply not accurate.

 

[Polk]

I'm wondering about this so called tax cut that President Obama supposedly gave all of us.

Me too. I didn't see a difference. Perhaps I will in 2010, since I adjusted our W4's to have additional money withheld from our paychecks. I'd just like to break even one year! LOL!

Not seeing the difference was sorta the point. They adjusted the withholding tables so you'd get it little by little during the year and spend it, instead of getting it all at once.

 

[GilbertArizona]

The $800 Making Work Pay Credit was supposed to be the tax cut. But, what Obama neglected to tell us is that the tax brackets were not adjusted down by this amount so at the end of the year your tax burden didn't change by this amount. Basically it was a short term loan from our government. We all had to pay it back (either by actually paying more or by getting less of a refund) when we filed our 2009 tax returns.

Rick

It was a tax credit not a change in tax rates. My wife and I qualified for the credit (Schedule M) and thus we kept the $800 and didn't have to pay it back.

We do have a couple of sons that didn't qualify. But that was out of our own choosing. Economically they each basically received a $400 loan and paid it back (exactly as in your senario). That $400 was not enough to offset the economic advantage of the college tuition discount they qualify for as our dependents (my wife works at a university).

 

[Dont Taz Me Bro]

The Recovery Act signed by Obama last year cut federal income taxes for 98 percent of working Americans

It did no such thing. It provided one time tax credits to some people, some which were earned income credits where people received money even if they didn't pay any taxes, which amounts to nothing more than a Marxist redistribution of other people's money.

 

[boedicca]

Matthew and I earned $100 bucks more this year than last year...which is just pitiful, but the corporation he works for gave NO RAISES last year, and so far no raises this year either, and our tax savings was $826 bucks.

$26 less on the tax rate and
$250 check matt got as a stimulus check from the VA, and $550 back on make working pay credit for the two of us. the $250 got taken out of the the $800 so for the make work pay credit it was $550 for us.

And yet government employees across the country are getting 4-5% raises while your income is basically flat (or actually lower when adjusted for inflation).

What's wrong with that picture?

 

[Ravi]

I made more this year than last but only paid a little more in taxes $63 to be exact.

It had nothing to do with Obama though.

See I did a real tricky thing and started running a lot of what would have been taxable income through a management company and then was able to write off all kinds of property repairs and renovations that I wouldn't have been able to last year. I did some additional renovations on the barn (new siding, insulation and it's now partially heated and air conditioned) and now i rent a climate controlled storage unit to the business and we finished our home gym (also in the barn) which I then get 300 a month from our business and write it off as an employee health club benefit.

Then I opened another 401k for the management group and dumped all that income into it avoiding all kinds of income taxes.

cool huh?

Don't you have to claim the $300 as personal income?

 

[Skull Pilot]

I made more this year than last but only paid a little more in taxes $63 to be exact.

It had nothing to do with Obama though.

See I did a real tricky thing and started running a lot of what would have been taxable income through a management company and then was able to write off all kinds of property repairs and renovations that I wouldn't have been able to last year. I did some additional renovations on the barn (new siding, insulation and it's now partially heated and air conditioned) and now i rent a climate controlled storage unit to the business and we finished our home gym (also in the barn) which I then get 300 a month from our business and write it off as an employee health club benefit.

Then I opened another 401k for the management group and dumped all that income into it avoiding all kinds of income taxes.

cool huh?

Don't you have to claim the $300 as personal income?

Yes but I dump it into a retirement plan pretax. And since it's not payroll income I avoid FICA taxes as well as a host of others. So it's a write off for our S corp and not taxed as income in the LLC

Besides the renovations and property improvements done through the management group allowed me to claim a net loss for the LLC even though we pumped a lot of money into the 401k.

 

[Ravi]

But you could put the money into the retirement plan anyway, without all the additional paperwork, no?

I don't really understand what you are doing with the property management group that you couldn't already do with your original business.

 

[Skull Pilot]

But you could put the money into the retirement plan anyway, without all the additional paperwork, no?

I don't really understand what you are doing with the property management group that you couldn't already do with your original business.

The management company gives me a way to write off a lot of things i could not claim as business expenses for the corp.

For example, the LLC "office" is in my barn, so the new roof, siding, heating system etc are all write offs. I could not legitimately have the corp write those off.

And having a second 401k allows my wife and I to put away more for retirement as we are already maxing out our retirement plan for the corp.

Most people don't know that you can out up to 45K away in pretax retirement plans but a 401 has a 16,500 limit so by opening a second 401 under the LLC my wife and I can now each put 33K away pretax.

 

[Ravi]

But you could put the money into the retirement plan anyway, without all the additional paperwork, no?

I don't really understand what you are doing with the property management group that you couldn't already do with your original business.

The management company gives me a way to write off a lot of things i could not claim as business expenses for the corp.

For example, the LLC "office" is in my barn, so the new roof, siding, heating system etc are all write offs. I could not legitimately have the corp write those off.

And having a second 401k allows my wife and I to put away more for retirement as we are already maxing out our retirement plan for the corp.

Most people don't know that you can out up to 45K away in pretax retirement plans but a 401 has a 16,500 limit so by opening a second 401 under the LLC my wife and I can now each put 33K away pretax.

You might want to check this out...as you wouldn't need another business to contribute to it, and you can put up to $49K per year into it.

SEP IRA | SEPIRA.com

As for the barn office, you can still only write off a small portion of it as it is your personal property, no?

 

[Skull Pilot]

But you could put the money into the retirement plan anyway, without all the additional paperwork, no?

I don't really understand what you are doing with the property management group that you couldn't already do with your original business.

The management company gives me a way to write off a lot of things i could not claim as business expenses for the corp.

For example, the LLC "office" is in my barn, so the new roof, siding, heating system etc are all write offs. I could not legitimately have the corp write those off.

And having a second 401k allows my wife and I to put away more for retirement as we are already maxing out our retirement plan for the corp.

Most people don't know that you can out up to 45K away in pretax retirement plans but a 401 has a 16,500 limit so by opening a second 401 under the LLC my wife and I can now each put 33K away pretax.

You might want to check this out...as you wouldn't need another business to contribute to it, and you can put up to $49K per year into it.

SEP IRA | SEPIRA.com

As for the barn office, you can still only write off a small portion of it as it is your personal property, no?

But with a SEP the provision is 25% of income up to 49K a year. The 401 does not have that limit so in reality I can save more with the 401 because the income the LLC generates is by design just enough to max out the second 401s

The 25% limit would mean to put 16500 away that we would need a 66K income from the LLC for each of us.

And a SEP for the corp would not be a good idea because we have 10 employees. A SEP only makes sense if you have no employees.

And my property is designated mixed commercial use not residential. So the lease the LLC has on the barn is triple net so all property repairs are the responsibility of the LLC

 

[Ravi]

The management company gives me a way to write off a lot of things i could not claim as business expenses for the corp.

For example, the LLC "office" is in my barn, so the new roof, siding, heating system etc are all write offs. I could not legitimately have the corp write those off.

And having a second 401k allows my wife and I to put away more for retirement as we are already maxing out our retirement plan for the corp.

Most people don't know that you can out up to 45K away in pretax retirement plans but a 401 has a 16,500 limit so by opening a second 401 under the LLC my wife and I can now each put 33K away pretax.

You might want to check this out...as you wouldn't need another business to contribute to it, and you can put up to $49K per year into it.

SEP IRA | SEPIRA.com

As for the barn office, you can still only write off a small portion of it as it is your personal property, no?

But with a SEP the provision is 25% of income up to 49K a year. The 401 does not have that limit so in reality I can save more with the 401 because the income the LLC generates is by design just enough to max out the second 401s

The 25% limit would mean to put 16500 away that we would need a 66K income from the LLC for each of us.

Good point. But what do you do with the money left over in your company kitty at the end of the year?

 

[Ravi]

The management company gives me a way to write off a lot of things i could not claim as business expenses for the corp.

For example, the LLC "office" is in my barn, so the new roof, siding, heating system etc are all write offs. I could not legitimately have the corp write those off.

And having a second 401k allows my wife and I to put away more for retirement as we are already maxing out our retirement plan for the corp.

Most people don't know that you can out up to 45K away in pretax retirement plans but a 401 has a 16,500 limit so by opening a second 401 under the LLC my wife and I can now each put 33K away pretax.

You might want to check this out...as you wouldn't need another business to contribute to it, and you can put up to $49K per year into it.

SEP IRA | SEPIRA.com

As for the barn office, you can still only write off a small portion of it as it is your personal property, no?

But with a SEP the provision is 25% of income up to 49K a year. The 401 does not have that limit so in reality I can save more with the 401 because the income the LLC generates is by design just enough to max out the second 401s

The 25% limit would mean to put 16500 away that we would need a 66K income from the LLC for each of us.

And a SEP for the corp would not be a good idea because we have 10 employees. A SEP only makes sense if you have no employees.

You can get the employees to opt out of the SEP IRA, which shouldn't be a problem if you have 401Ks for them.

 

[Skull Pilot]

You might want to check this out...as you wouldn't need another business to contribute to it, and you can put up to $49K per year into it.

SEP IRA | SEPIRA.com

As for the barn office, you can still only write off a small portion of it as it is your personal property, no?

But with a SEP the provision is 25% of income up to 49K a year. The 401 does not have that limit so in reality I can save more with the 401 because the income the LLC generates is by design just enough to max out the second 401s

The 25% limit would mean to put 16500 away that we would need a 66K income from the LLC for each of us.

Good point. But what do you do with the money left over in your company kitty at the end of the year?

In the corp?

It's an S corp so whether we take the money or not we pay the taxes. We generally take a distribution and leave some money in the coffers