Anons, don't wait until the last minute to do your taxes. We expected the promised tax break and got a hardship & penalty instead. Don't wait because you may need the time to do some juggling to pay the bill.
Let me say up front that I support POTUS 1000%, and this does NOT & will NOT change that one bit. I want our freedom back. I want this evil removed. I'd pay money to help the cause, and it appears I am!!
But we are pretty demoralized because his promised tax break was NOT a break at all for this middle class family. Worse, I fear that as others realize the break isn't a break, the media will have just another thing to use to brutalize him.
When I read about the new cap on the state & local tax (SALT) deduction, I got spooked, and rightly so. Those of you with no state taxes are very lucky.
Our unpleasant experience:
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Because of the changes, and without changing our withholding at all, the total amount of Fed tax withheld for the year was about 17% less than the prior year which was nice until we did te taxes. It did mean more money in our checks, but now we owe more than two times the difference plus a penalty.
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Only 57% of deductions we were allowed to use the prior year were allowable this year because of the loss of the Personal Exemptions combined with the new cap on the state & local tax (SALT) deductions. That's not small for those with state tax and a home, and it was all deductable before.
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We owe almost two months' salary and were not prepared for this, and we owe a penalty through no fault of our own. For a married couple with a dependent, our withholding was proper and should have been adequate. Withholding at married & zero for both parents for all of 2019 would not fix this or even prevent a penalty for the next year.
We're scrambling to figure out how to pay for this and how to rescue the next year. This equates to a significant salary cut for us if it is the new norm. I'm not asking for sympathy. Just want POTUS and anons to realize this is broken…