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I know everyone has opinions on whether the new tax law will raise of low individual taxes. Before another can answer this I am curious how many of you do you own taxes, if you do, do you itemize or do the 1040EZ. I think this make big difference in knowing if it will go up or down.
I do my own taxes and have done so for the last 20 yrs, I use to use an tax account and found out it was not worth the money when you can do it with Turbo tax. Over the years I know exactly what I have paid in taxes and what write offs I had. Turbo tax will give you multiply years comparison and they also tell you how your taxes stack up against others in the same tax situation. I do not think most people know how or if their taxes changed over times.
With all the people complaining they going to pay more, I curious how they know since Fed taxes records show most people do not even both to itemize. Have you seen those H&R Block commercials, the reason they get people more money back is because all they did was itemize verse filling out the 1040EZ. Because most people do not itemize the new tax code will give them more since the standard deductions doubled.
I can tell you over the last 8 yrs I have paid more taxes each year it was more as % of what I make. Some portion of this was due to the decrease on Mortgage interest as I pay off the house. However this did not explain it all. I did figure what was happen. The last administration did on increase the taxes all they did was reduced what you could deduct or phased out tax credits like the child credit. The child credit was so small, to so claiming my son on my taxes while he was in collect and working since it allow who to claim the life time learning credit which got phased out for me. because he was in school and did not make a whole lot he end up getting more money back than he paid in. Because I used TurboTax it allow me to do what if scenarios to figure which was the best way to file my taxes.
Here is another example, I could never use this since my family never had medical expense, the last administration up the threshold to claim from 7% of your income to 11% this was after Obamacare went into effect and they hit you with penalties for not having insurance.
I can tell you the fed have been playing games with the taxes for a long time mostly trying to find ways make you pay more without knowing. The government knows they most people do not pay they close attention to their taxes, they see what is in their pay check, when it comes to filling their taxes, they do not track it over many years. It like easypass these days, they keep upping the tolls and most people have not idea since it automatically paid. When people had to pull money out of their wallet each day it was extremely hard for them to raise tolls, not that people do not see it each day the government has raised it over and over and people just take it. The same has been going on with taxes.
BTW the biggest impact to your taxes was when interested drops so low, people refinance from 6% to 7% down to 2% 4%, this along had net effect on you paying less mortgage interest so you had less mortgage interest deduction so you paid more taxes. The government did this they screwed the banks since they made less on mortgage interest but the government won since you could write off less and they could collect more taxes. When I refinance had huge effect on the total taxes I ended up paying.
All I am pointing out, if you have not done you own taxes you have no idea how this will impact you, and stop listening to the media they too have no idea since they have not done their own taxes or yours.
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