Tax filing deadline for 2021 delayed until May 17th

[The Heretic]

IRS delays tax filing deadline until May 17

Accountants had pressed the tax agency for more time given the challenges of dealing with the coronavirus pandemic.

www.cbsnews.com

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[Alexx1401]

Great, I had read they were not going to extend it this year. Now I can wait till may 17th to pay them
We got our $2800 but, we owe 2K. Last I heard now the party who won wants to increase my taxes more to make up for the money they printed to send me. I guess this only makes sense if you got elected as a law maker because it goes clean over my head

 

[Deerhurst]

Interesting. It been probably a month since I got my refund checks. I really hate giving them a free loan.

 

[Alexx1401]

Interesting. It been probably a month since I got my refund checks. I really hate giving them a free loan.

That is why I always set us up to owe them. Wife has a few times kicked about it a little when it comes time to pay. Saying she sees others getting a "refund". I have told her every time. want a refund? Put some away in one of the accounts every pay day. Tax time take it back out. She does payroll where she works so she could easily figure out how much to put away. She never pushes it after that. I far prefer to get my money now, spend it as I see fit, rather than give a free loan to the people taxing me.

 

[bigbearbear]

Interesting. It been probably a month since I got my refund checks. I really hate giving them a free loan.

Ok this is a true story. When I came to the US about 20 years ago, I have no idea about the tax system and the difference between Federal and State tax (I was in California back then). I came from a very low tax country, Singapore, where there is no tax withholding and you write a tiny check for the government at the end of the year and that's it.

So when I started working, they asked me to fill in the form about tax withholding and I have no idea what I'm doing. I put in some numbers and assumed everything is ok. As the year proceed, I did find that my take home pay was quite small.....hmmm....

Then when its time to do the taxes, I found out that I've been withholding A LOT more than I should have. I ended up with a $18k refund!!

So I started doing more research and normalized by withholding amount and the rest as they say, is history.

 

[CountryGent]

Thanks for the heads up. We already have ours filed and received a refund (Federales) and paid extra (State). But good they're giving folks a little more time. As of this writing, nada on third stimulus deposits; none of the reasons why this would be delayed apply to us and, unsurprisingly, the IRS site was worthless. Meh.

 

[The Heretic]

I've tried for years to set it so I owed as little as possible, but that I owed instead of getting a refund.

When I bought a house that took a few years to adjust for the extra deductions - I found just declaring one more dependent was about right to match the mortgage interest and property tax. I still owed state, and often federal, but not so much that I had to pay a fine for not paying enough during the year.

Last year was totally screwed up; laid off, started SS in August, got $37K in UI benefits (had taxes taken out of those, but not enough). So I will owe, but I don't know how much.

Then there is the contract gig I did this year, so I have to pay estimated self-employment tax, but I also have to put as much as I can (almost all of it) of that income into a solo 401K (still have to pay full FICA tax on it though). Then UI benefits and SS income this year too.

Next year, my income will be simpler and much less; just SS income and I will move some funds from my IRAs into my Roth IRA - I will then be in the two lowest tax brackets so I want to move those $ before I have to do RMDs (age 72 - 5 years from now), so as to spread it out over more years and pay less in taxes.