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2020 (now 2021) Taxes, put your questions/resources here
ceres
When the last moon is cast over the last star of morningAnd the future has past without even a last desperate warningRegistered User, Moderator mod
When the last moon is cast over the last star of morningAnd the future has past without even a last desperate warningRegistered User, Moderator mod
No one else has made one and I have a 2020 tax question, so there's a thread now.
My husband's employer folded last year and we haven't received a W2. Is it worthwhile to call ADP and spend God knows how long on hold only to to be told I called the wrong department eight times, or do I absolutely need to use the IRS website and hyperventilate my way through some forms and then wait 10 days?
My husband's employer folded last year and we haven't received a W2. Is it worthwhile to call ADP and spend God knows how long on hold only to to be told I called the wrong department eight times, or do I absolutely need to use the IRS website and hyperventilate my way through some forms and then wait 10 days?
And it seems like all is dying, and would leave the world to mourn
ceres on
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If he's working at another place, they may have his tax forms from the last place when he signs in. Not sure if your can log in with SSN or anything.
You can also try the IRS transcripts. https://www.irs.gov/individuals/get-transcript
If he has a CC and a mobile phone, you can get the forms electronicaly.
Both worth giving a try if it means avoiding phone hell. Or try while you're on the phone.
Although if the company actually closed (sounds like it), and assuming you guys haven't moved or something and might have missed the W-2 in the mail, it seems likely that the company didn't even bother creating the W-2s. Does he know anyone else who worked there who could confirm?
I personally wouldn't want to spend too long trying to figure it out. It might make a difference how much we're talking about. If he worked there for a short time and just made a couple thousand dollars, that's different than if it was his main job and he made $50k. But either way, the IRS has a form that you can attach to your return in place of the W-2, I think it's Form 4852. It's just a question of how much time you want to spend filling it out. If he happens to have one of his later paystubs from the company, it would actually be really easy. Whereas if not, you basically just have to estimate.
And here's what it actually says at the top of that form:
If you don’t receive the missing or corrected form from your employer or payer by the end of February, you may call the IRS at
800-829-1040 for assistance. You must provide your name, address (including ZIP code), phone number, social security number, and dates of
employment. You must also provide your employer’s or payer’s name, address (including ZIP code), and phone number. The IRS will contact
your employer or payer and request the missing form. The IRS will also send you a Form 4852. If you don’t receive the missing form in
sufficient time to file your income tax return timely, you may use the Form 4852 that the IRS sent you to file with your return.
If it were me, I'd probably try once, but I don't even know if you can get through to the IRS these days. Those instructions were obviously written before covid. If you can't get through, I'd just take a stab at the form, and attach it to your 1040, and call it a day.
And I can't officially recommend this, but if it's a relatively small amount, you could probably just file your return without it. Presumably any withholding he had would have been a reasonable estimate of how much tax you would have owed on that income, anyway. Just a thought.
Two W2s and a 1099-G later it's pretty apparent that the two companies had no interest in sending anything. He had to go to non-public sites and do weird stuff to get one of them, and the 1099-G I think he just had to log in for, which is nice but we didn't know. We got all kinds of crazy paperwork from the state and a bunch of healthcare forms we didn't end up needing anyway, just none of it was a 1099-G.
I was under the impression that companies had to get this shit mailed out to you by January 31 by law, and it's nice to be able to log into some of these places and not worry they were lost in the mail like our stuff usually is, but one made no effort to let us know where they were and the other was practically hidden. This year's taxes are crazy enough without this crap. Thank God for his friend being on top of it.
But in the highly likely event I forget about it, how do I reset my pin?
I sold stock last year in a non-insignificant amount (12k-ish) but haven't received a tax document about it.
I assume I'm supposed to get something that I need to plug into whatever tax service I use but don't have anything yet.
Should I file for an extension or just file my payroll taxes and then file for the stock sell once I'm able to?
I have more than enough of the sale stuck in a savings account so what I have to pay in isn't a concern but I really don't want to have to pay penalties.
- COVID relief twice
- Many thousands in rent forgiveness through a private agreement (not the govt)
- Unemployment in a state I no longer live
- No work until May
- Moved to a new state for work
- new job
- 1099 consulting work on the side that is reaping significant financial benefits
Also I own $10 worth of dogecoin.
edit: This is probably the wrong thread! Because instead of it just being 2020+ like everyone agreed to, the government is still calling it 2021!
After doing my taxes for the year my first was born, I briefly considered changing her middle name to "Tax Break".
That being said, many people use taxes as a kind of "forced savings".
I'm guessing that since we spent the vast majority of the year not married we still file separately and file married next year right?
I believe you can choose either option. Most of the efile sites I've used give a workup using both calcs.
Filing jointly is usually better, or at least not any worse. But like schuss said, most software will let you enter everything as Married Joint, but then do a quick calculation to see if you'd somehow save taxes by filing Married Separate.
https://krebsonsecurity.com/2022/01/irs-will-soon-require-selfies-for-online-access/
It took me less than 10 minutes total.
So should I say "we got both" because if I'm looking at the right thing in our bank statement we did, or should I put down the information that's in the only letter we got because that's what the box on the form says?
edit: I also can't find any evidence of child tax credit payments, and we didn't get letters for that, but I thought they were automatic? I dunno I had a rough year and wasn't paying attention to any of this, and all these credit/letter mystery combos are making me nervous.
nm my husband and I spent 20 minutes making some godforsaken ID.me accounts and figured it out.
So I have filed a paper return for years but knowing how this year with the news I might not get my return until the fall. My brother has been pushing me to use Turbo tax or such sighting it's Free! and you can file your state since they charge for that?
I doubt I can get it for free since I can claim him as a dependent, head of household and home owner as i feel it would push me into the paid service. But again the main reason I sighted in the above is why I am hesitant
TT is free up to a certain income level for most standard stuff (HSA is where I ran into problems). State probably won't be free and TT will try their best to push paid options and hide the free options from you.
I think possibly they're required to offer the free file by law which is maybe the one way our tax law isn't utterly stupid.
You can also free file online (semi)directly with with the IRS, which is how I've done it the last few years since the fees for those additional forms were wiping out most the gains the accounts on those forms represented.
There's a link on the IRS website to freefillableforms or something like that. It's just more simple than most of the software services. It's basically just what it says. Unguided fillable versions of the paper forms, which do some of the math. If you're used to doing them on paper it's probably familiar. Each form has links to pdfs of the instructions.
Response from the IRS is pretty swift on them too. Usually within half an hour of submitting I get an email saying whether it was accepted or rejected because somehow on my W2 a number that exists nowhere anywhere that I could see on any of my documents got pasted into the EIN field?
It looks like, from what I can find, my employer will withhold California state tax, but likely not NC; But because we live in NC, we'll still owe here.
I'm not super sure about that part, what I'm even less sure about is if either state will credit me for the taxes either paid or owed to the other state.
And that last one is really the more important question for me in the end. I don't care if they take it all as long as I'll get it back (yes I use my refund like a short term savings account)
A separate question is whether the employer should in fact be withholding CA tax. If you're living and working in NC, it seems pretty clear that you should be a NC resident, not CA. But it's also a pain for companies to register and pay taxes in other states, so it can be an uphill battle trying to get them to consider you a NC resident instead of CA. Especially if you'd be the only one, and everyone else is in CA. It wouldn't hurt to at least ask, though.
Worth checking, but superficially I’d be surprised if you’re not correct that CA believes you owe taxes there
So I have 3 W2s this year and as I plugged them in I watched my return drop from nearly 1k (usually I get more than this) on the first one to 300 after adding the second and the final one took me down to 150, my lowest fed return ever. The TurboTax app suggested I may have changed something on one of my W4s to take less (but I don't know when, or how, I did this). I think I may have goofed something up but I imported in and double checked all my numbers.
I'll follow that up by saying in the past, something similar happened where I got a bigger return if I only filed one of my two W2s. I successfully got said bigger return by not doing my taxes correctly (I assume this is a bad idea but nothing has happened since). I guess as a layman trying to do my taxes and get the best return, what should I do? After the fees from TT my return was basically 40 bucks which is a joke, but my state one was double last year's...?
Help
So what may be happening here as you're adding each W-2, assuming you've put in all your data points in correctly, it's possible the combined income is bumping you to a higher tax bracket due to your higher combined incomes. Another possibility is that one of the W-2s you have your "Witholdings" set higher, ie you have less federal/state taxes taken out each paycheck resulting in a smaller return come tax time. Adjusting your witholdings can cause your return to go down as the logic is that you're paying less taxes per paycheck which will mean your return (IE your overpayment of federal/state taxes for the entire year) will become smaller. Ultimately if you're still lost, it may be worth it to have a professional tax person to take a look at it for you, but either way you'll want to play it safe more than anything.
Wud yoo laek to lern aboot meatz? Look here!
Unless you have very complicated taxes (i.e. self-employed small business) look into the free/cheap tax software options listed below. You can even double-check the math against HRB/TT since you can see the final numbers before purchasing them. Note all options should give you the same final amount so if you get a result significantly higher/lower double-check your math. At the very least you'll be saving the TT fees with these options.
For anyone taking a new job. Use a paycheck calculator so you can see about how much you should be taking home. I use the one from paycheck city because it’s the least offensive. Others do the multi page drip feed thing, and I just want to slap in state county income tax exempt deductions and have it tell me what my paycheck should be.
I've gone back and looked at my previous returns and they're all similar to this and I've never noticed it and I've never been notified about it. And every year I doublecheck that I've entered every figure from every box on my W-2 into Turbotax, including my 401k contributions, dependent care account, etc.
What I can't figure out is why TurboTax has me owing $90 less in federal taxes than the return I filed. I checked, and all the numbers on all the forms are the same except line 16, tax owed. I got my number by looking it up in the federal tax tables (and I double checked that I had the right row and column). I have no idea where TurboTax got their number. Wtf?
I'm much less annoyed by the $90 than I am by the way the US tax code is completely fucking opaque unless you specialize in it for a living.
New fun thing: I accidentally left a 1099-INT off my TurboTax federal return, for a grand total of $1 income. Now, the federal return I actually filed had that included, so no big deal. Except the state return generated by TurboTax has the wrong federal taxable income (again, off by $1); but I can't just generate a new return, oh no. TurboTax has my returns marked as "filed," so the only thing I can do there is generate an amended state and federal return. So either I send my state return and my amended state return in the same envelope, or I go track down all the forms on my state's website and fill them out myself, copying values from the original and amended TurboTax state returns as necessary.
Argh.
edit: I should note that the $1 doesn't even change what I owe the state (which, incidentally, is nothing). It does increase my federal taxes owed by $11, according to TurboTax. For some reason.