First, enter your 2014 income...
Sometimes I hear people talking about how nice it would be to have a flat tax. Sometimes they think I am not in favor of it because I would lose all my clients. LOL, no.
NONE of the work on a tax return is from calculating the tax. That's a straight table lookup and the software does it. 90% comes from calculating what constitutes taxable income. For example, if you have retail sales of $100,000 from selling five cars for $20,000 each, what is your taxable income? Should you get to deduct the wholesale cost of those cars? What about the salaries you had to pay your receptionist? Can you deduct the cost of the business landlines? What about your smartphone - that number is on your card. What about the showroom; you are paying a mortgage and also you just got it resided this year, too.
What is income? Is it when your friends paid you to dog sit? The proceeds of the settlement from a car accident? The $10,000 your Grandma paid for your tuition?
And deductions are equally as complex.
After you arrive at taxable income there is a whole 'nother hurdle: what tax CREDITS are you eligible for? (Very many are possible.) Then, of course, is the question of how much you have already paid in on your account, and how to get the refund (or figure out how to pay).
Except for a very few engagements where people ask me to calculate the effective tax rate of a course of action, nearly none of my business would change one iota with a flat tax.
Meanwhile, the people who had NO idea that taxes were this complicated for the half the country who aren't Salarymen recently passed a law saying that my clients should sign up for health insurance in November while holding their 2014 tax return in their hands so they can estimate their 2015 income.
100% of the people signing up for Obamacare right now do not have their 2014 tax returns done. Congress has not even finalized tax law for 2014.
Nearly all of them are people who are unemployed, self-employed, or hourly part-time workers not making much money. High-level financial skills are notably absent in most cases. NONE of these people can answer the basic questions about what their modified adjusted gross income for the combined members of their family are for 2014, and even if they could, it is highly likely to change for 2015,which is the year whose tax credit they are taking an advance on. Will their income be the same in 2015 as 2013? How could it? These are the people who by definition don't have salaries.
MA also assumes they have Web Access to email outside of work (and apparently dual monitors) as well as high speed Internet access. The elitism is killing me. Just killing me.
NONE of the work on a tax return is from calculating the tax. That's a straight table lookup and the software does it. 90% comes from calculating what constitutes taxable income. For example, if you have retail sales of $100,000 from selling five cars for $20,000 each, what is your taxable income? Should you get to deduct the wholesale cost of those cars? What about the salaries you had to pay your receptionist? Can you deduct the cost of the business landlines? What about your smartphone - that number is on your card. What about the showroom; you are paying a mortgage and also you just got it resided this year, too.
What is income? Is it when your friends paid you to dog sit? The proceeds of the settlement from a car accident? The $10,000 your Grandma paid for your tuition?
And deductions are equally as complex.
After you arrive at taxable income there is a whole 'nother hurdle: what tax CREDITS are you eligible for? (Very many are possible.) Then, of course, is the question of how much you have already paid in on your account, and how to get the refund (or figure out how to pay).
Except for a very few engagements where people ask me to calculate the effective tax rate of a course of action, nearly none of my business would change one iota with a flat tax.
Meanwhile, the people who had NO idea that taxes were this complicated for the half the country who aren't Salarymen recently passed a law saying that my clients should sign up for health insurance in November while holding their 2014 tax return in their hands so they can estimate their 2015 income.
100% of the people signing up for Obamacare right now do not have their 2014 tax returns done. Congress has not even finalized tax law for 2014.
Nearly all of them are people who are unemployed, self-employed, or hourly part-time workers not making much money. High-level financial skills are notably absent in most cases. NONE of these people can answer the basic questions about what their modified adjusted gross income for the combined members of their family are for 2014, and even if they could, it is highly likely to change for 2015,which is the year whose tax credit they are taking an advance on. Will their income be the same in 2015 as 2013? How could it? These are the people who by definition don't have salaries.
MA also assumes they have Web Access to email outside of work (and apparently dual monitors) as well as high speed Internet access. The elitism is killing me. Just killing me.