Your Federal tax bill this year, 2018 payable in 2019

[Value Buy]

We have been trying to estimate our Federal tax  bill for this year.
Crunching the preliminary numbers I am thinking our tax bill will be considerably higher than last year.
Has anyone found a calculator where we can actually plug in our numbers, including the following
Insurance health premiums- are they still deductible?
I think donations are still deductable.
Is mortgage interest tied into the $10,000 limit as property taxes are, or are they still totally deductable?
I realize the personal deductions everyone had are gone and married filling jointly is at $24,000 or so.

Is there a site we can go to, and plug the numbers in?
Thanks

[spartyparty]

I would think this should give you what you are looking for:


apps.irs.gov/app/withholdingcalculator/

[Deleted]

The Taxcaster app from TurboTax is pretty good.

[bookkeeper]

Check out the IRS Draft forms for 2018.  


And the Draft Tax Table for 2018.

Edited to add, my previous links did not pull up the forms.  Search for 2018 IRS Draft Forms and you will see the proposed forms, instructions and tax table.


Actually filling out the forms will give you a more accurate picture than any estimator.  If you are unsure about filling in the forms, use last year's form as a starting point.

DH and I had an end of the year tax planning strategy session just the other day!

[MN-Investor]

www.dinkytown.net/java/1040-tax-calculator.html

I'm going to use Dinkytown's tax calculator. (By they way, they have many financial calculators at their site.)

I'm also going to get TurboTax this month. It was invaluable last year - I had sold a good chunk of low basis stock and was also considering converting some conventional IRA money to a Roth IRA. Oops. TurboTax showed me that the Roth conversion would have effectively had a marginal tax rate of 30%. The IRA money would have been taxed at 15%, and it would have pushed long term capital gains out of the 0% tax bracket to the 15% tax bracket, so an equal amount of LTCGs would have been taxed at 15% too.

[Value Buy]

Nov 16, 2018 13:18:54 GMT -5 spartyparty said:

I would think this should give you what you are looking for:


apps.irs.gov/app/withholdingcalculator/

I tried this but it does not factor in I have no job (retired) so if I put SS and small pension in the income slot it will skewer the tax owed since I will not pay on all of the SS.
There is no where to deduct property taxes etc, so the number I come of with is probably wonky. I suppose I could deduct property taxes from the income figure.....

[SVT]

Taxcaster is what I use.

[nittanycheme]

Nov 16, 2018 15:52:43 GMT -5 Value Buy said:

Nov 16, 2018 13:18:54 GMT -5 spartyparty said:

I would think this should give you what you are looking for:


apps.irs.gov/app/withholdingcalculator/

I tried this but it does not factor in I have no job (retired) so if I put SS and small pension in the income slot it will skewer the tax owed since I will not pay on all of the SS.
There is no where to deduct property taxes etc, so the number I come of with is probably wonky. I suppose I could deduct property taxes from the income figure.....

When I filled out the withholding calculator, it did have a spot for "taxes you paid" which would include property tax, state income tax etc.  It won't let you enter anything above $10k, so if you know your numbers are above that, you don't need to bother to fully total them up.  Just put in $10,000.  Between my state, local, and property taxes, my number is above that.  One reason the tax plan doesn't really help me much. 

 From description from withholding calculator: "Taxes You Paid Taxpayers may claim an itemized deduction of up to $10,000 ($5,000 for married taxpayers filing a separate return) for State and local income taxes, property taxes or sales taxes, applicable to taxable years beginning after December 31, 2017 and before January 1, 2026. "

[Deleted]

I tried the Dinkytown calculator and, if it's correct, we're screwed to the tune of $2-3,000    DH will NOT withhold enough so I'll start figuring out where to rob that much from.

[The Walk of the Penguin Mich]

Nov 18, 2018 13:10:02 GMT -5 @donethat said:

I tried the Dinkytown calculator and, if it's correct, we're screwed to the tune of $2-3,000    DH will NOT withhold enough so I'll start figuring out where to rob that much from.

Yeah...we were short too, but figured that we could withhold extra 7ntil the end of the year to cover it.  We had 2.5 months though, so 5 paychecks.

[bookkeeper]

We don't need to worry about underpaying.  DH's 401k administrator automatically withholds 20% of any draw you request.  How nice of them.  Anyway, I don't need to send in quarterly estimated tax for my family farm income.  The 20% more than has us covered.

The real number people need to track is effective tax rate.  The CPA I worked with for years included this figure in all his clients billing package.  Near the top of the stack.  It is an important number especially as you move up the food chain.  It's not how much you make, it's how much you keep!

Hope everyone keeps some and gives some away this holiday season.  Many people are without.

[phil5185]

Yeah...we were short too, but figured that we could withhold extra 7ntil the end of the year to cover it. We had 2.5 months though, so 5 paychecks.

Cover it?? It is not due until April 15 of 2019, are you in a hurry to prepay it - lol?

[❤ mollymouser ❤]

We usually just live in blissful ignorance until we do our taxes in early February.

[schildi]

I am trying to pay as much as I did the year before (to avoid paying a penalty), so I am increasing my withholding usually in October in order to get there by the end of the year.

Then, in February, I do the taxes and submit them usually in mid April with the remainder of what we owe.

[TheHaitian]

Nov 18, 2018 18:17:37 GMT -5 bookkeeper said:

The real number people need to track is effective tax rate.  The CPA I worked with for years included this figure in all his clients billing package.  Near the top of the stack.  It is an important number especially as you move up the food chain.  It's not how much you make, it's how much you keep!

Yep, my CPA provides it every year on the first page which is the Return Summary.

[jeffreymo]

Our taxes are only slightly complicated. We pay self employment tax on my wife’s income so we get a reduction in income for that. There could be an additional schedule to determine eligibility, but I know we’ll be able to reduce business income by 20%. We have minimal taxable investment income. I’m salaried so I’m able to come up with my box 1 wages and box 2 withholding. We won’t be itemizing so we’ll take the 24,000 standard deduction. So the taxable income number might take a few calculations but it’s doable.

Then we run that through the tax table calculations which is easy to do in excel, subtract out 6000 in child tax credits and my W2 withholdings and our quarterly estimated payments. That puts us with approx $1k refund before any low level stuff we might’ve missed.

Generally we have a pretty good grasp on the income number. The deductions and credits are the good “surprises” that we find when we get our tax papers back from the accountant. I think once we get through this first year and see the simplifications to the tax code I may do it myself next year.

[jeffreymo]

Nov 18, 2018 18:17:37 GMT -5 bookkeeper said:

We don't need to worry about underpaying.  DH's 401k administrator automatically withholds 20% of any draw you request.  How nice of them.  Anyway, I don't need to send in quarterly estimated tax for my family farm income.  The 20% more than has us covered.

The real number people need to track is effective tax rate.  The CPA I worked with for years included this figure in all his clients billing package.  Near the top of the stack.  It is an important number especially as you move up the food chain.  It's not how much you make, it's how much you keep!

Hope everyone keeps some and gives some away this holiday season.  Many people are without.

I agree the effective rate is important as a statistic after the year is complete, but in my opinion knowing your marginal rate (rate applied to your last dollar) in a given year can help with decision-making before tax time.

Last December I didn’t quickly know what my effective rate was going to be for 2017, but I did know that my marginal rate was 25%. I was able to prepay property tax and some charitable contributions that I would not be able to deduct in 2018 due to the tax law. The return on that money was 25% in the form of tax savings.

Some of my friends had a hard time grasping that and they were pointing to the effective tax rate. I had to put it on paper for them to understand.

[The Walk of the Penguin Mich]

Nov 18, 2018 19:11:28 GMT -5 phil5185 said:

Yeah...we were short too, but figured that we could withhold extra 7ntil the end of the year to cover it. We had 2.5 months though, so 5 paychecks.

Cover it?? It is not due until April 15 of 2019, are you in a hurry to prepay it - lol?

Trying to avoid paying a penalty.  LOL?  

[MN-Investor]

The underpayment penalty for 2017 was 2.66%.

So if you underpaid your federal income taxes by $5,000, you would owe a penalty of  $133.

To me, that's not a big deal.

[The Walk of the Penguin Mich]

Nov 23, 2018 13:30:26 GMT -5 MN-Investor said:

The underpayment penalty for 2017 was 2.66%.

So if you underpaid your federal income taxes by $5,000, you would owe a penalty of  $133.

To me, that's not a big deal.

We underpaid by a hell of a lot more than $5000.  While we were not on track to underpay by that much this year, it was still way more than $5000, even with the change in taxes from now to the end of the year.

[MN-Investor]

The question then is How much will you make on that money from now until you pay it to the IRS? If you can make more by keeping it invested, then hang onto it and pay the penalty.

[The Walk of the Penguin Mich]

Nov 23, 2018 14:12:48 GMT -5 MN-Investor said:

The question then is How much will you make on that money from now until you pay it to the IRS? If you can make more by keeping it invested, then hang onto it and pay the penalty.

Not worth it.  Last year, we had to scramble to come up with so much cash to pay the IRS that we wiped out all easy access cash both of us had at the last minute.  It was a mess I’d prefer not to repeat.  Not likely that we’d have the same situation as that, but we’ve got other things where we will need to pay.

 

[TheHaitian]

If my accountant estimate last year we should only owe a couple hundred or 1k or get back just as much.

We will see...

[TheHaitian]

Need to finish cleaning out the shed Monday and get those donations in

[Deleted]

Today I explained to DH that his RMD was X and his bracket was Y so the tax on his RMD was what we will freaking owe because he refuses to withhold    While he accepts the fact that his RMD is taxable, he does not accept the fact that coming up with $2000 without hitting savings or investments is NOT my favorite way to begin the year.  

[TheOtherMe]

I have Turbo Tax for 2018 downloaded now and hope to have a better estimate by the end of the weekend.  Can't download the state return yet.