Warning: Rant on Tax Software

[JL13]

@JP

Sorry if I came across the wrong way, just trying to offer some help for next year. Taxes repeat every year, so any help I can provide this year could save you time next year.

$30,000 on dental?? Holy cow! Dental tourism maybe?

Selling of a rental/business property requires some horrible reporting re: passive losses, depreciation recapture. Yes definitely I can imagine how terrible that is for you.

One tip for foreign tax credit - you can omit form 1116 if you have less than (IIRC) $600 in foreign taxes paid out of a brokerage. Just plug the number right on the 1040.

[jennypenny]

@JL--Our dental isn't that bad. It was mostly medical (we have some heavy duty medical needs here). That was higher than it's been the last few years. We've had years with $75K and $100K though, so I'm grateful it wasn't that high. That's why whenever I talk about our family budget in other threads, I say it's not including medical expenses because our medical budget dwarfs any ERE budget. Next year I won't have any real estate transactions, but I'm sure I'll find some new and interesting ways to earn money that trigger even more forms.

Hey, I just realized the car I bought is a hybrid. Can I get a credit for owning one of those? That would be a new one for me.

[jacob]

Hey, I just realized the car I bought is a hybrid. Can I get a credit for owning one of those? That would be a new one for me.

You can get credit for buying a new one if it qualifies.

https://www.irs.gov/instructions/i8910/ch01.html

[Dragline]

I'm *this close* Dragline ... so tempting.

I do it every year . . .

[JL13]

You're both making me rethink this rental property purchase.

[bryan]

Probably going to go ahead and file an extension.. waiting on an excess contribution to be withdrawn from a slooow HSA provider.

Any idea when turbo tax goes on sale after the deadline?

[jennypenny]

You can get credit for buying a new one if it qualifies.

It's only new to me. It's an '06 Highlander. I'd lose my street cred around here if I bought anything newer.

[Dragline]

Highlander? "There Can Be Only One!"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOFsG6_r4wo

[jennypenny]

Triple digits baby (including the worksheets), but I'm done!

No extension for me. I'm going out of town and the last thing I wanted was to come back to this mess. I've learned my lesson the hard way--I'm doing the paperwork quarterly from now on so I don't have to muck around with it all at once. That was my biggest mistake this year.

[George the original one]

Ooo, this is a game I can play, too!

90 pages for Fed and 18 pages for Oregon (both including worksheets).

[bryan]

did both turbo tax and tax act this year (promise I'm not a masochist, though it's no doubt intuit is a sadist). TT actually found me a few hundred extra dollars. Kind of pisses me off they don't match.

Filed with TurboTax this past week. $120. $87 more than TaxAct, but in the end I come out $142 ahead. Spent an extra hour before that trying to find the discrepancy but failed. I have come to consider the QA style UI to actually be a bit of vendor lock in in that I can't just look at the forms or worksheets to compare between vendors (or free paper).

In the end, HSA and IRAs have been a pain for me in 2015 (two excess contributions to two different HSAs; excess contribution to Roth rechar to Traditional). Seems both websites don't handle it very easily (asking ambiguous, too simple questions).

Will either go with TaxAct or by hand for 2016.

[RealPerson]

@almostthere
You can get most popular tax software for about $20 during a promotion/sale. That's what I paid for mine this year. This will include federal and one state return. If you want it even cheaper, or you missed the sale, just file an extension and buy the software in August when they are desperately trying to unload it. I have done it a couple times.

That is a good idea. Just remember that filling an extension does not mean you can extend the tax payment itself. Make sure the delay does not cause penalties and interest.

Thanks, I know. I'm a former accountant.

I am an expert in giving advice to people who know better than me .