Current Events > Holy shit, I'm getting $4 grand in my tax return

(+) Yeah! (+)

What should I do with it?

Open a bakery that sells ironically named treats.
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Here come the save and invest comments
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You should hire someone to review your W2 so that you don't get a refund next year, and instead get more money with each pay check. That way you don't give the government an interest-free loan of $4,000 for a whole year, and can instead invest that money each money and end up with something like $6,000 instead.
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Yuck. I'd put it in the market, where it ought to have been while the government borrowed it
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definitely spend some of the 4k on professional tax help as fluffygerm suggested

4000 tacos
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JustMyOpinion posted...

That'd be one hell of an "investment" to get a 50% return in one year. Sounds more like wild speculation.

I mean you would've made 32% if you bought UNH stock a year ago and 41% if you bought Amazon stock and 300% if you bought some Ripple XRP.
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M_Live posted...

I admittedly don't know much about taxes, so I've always wondered, why can't the government just take the appropriate amount of money from us each year? Like, why go through all the hassle?

people that have real estate investments, trusts, private equity investments, brokerage accounts, multiple streams of income etc are impossible to keep track of properly by one single entity

A huge refund means you gave the government an interest free loan.
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Congrats TC.

M_Live posted...

I admittedly don't know much about taxes, so I've always wondered, why can't the government just take the appropriate amount of money from us each year? Like, why go through all the hassle?

The real reason is because the government knows that most citizens are unbelievably stupid/complacent/ignorant and can get away with borrowing tremendous amounts of money for 0 interest.
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I'm getting about $750 so I'm getting a moderately shitty couch to replace my really shitty couch
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DezDroppedFreak posted...

I'm getting about $750 so I'm getting a moderately shitty couch to replace my really shitty couch

Go to Craigslist. Why buy a shitty couch when you can get a shitty couch for free.
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I owe about three hundred dollars to the feds, and I prefer it that way. I get that getting a nice surprise payday is cool and all, but ultimately all that it means is that you gave the government an interest free loan.
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DragonGirlYuki posted...

DezDroppedFreak posted...

I'm getting about $750 so I'm getting a moderately shitty couch to replace my really shitty couch

Go to Craigslist. Why buy a shitty couch when you can get a shitty couch for free.

...
Damn brb
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You should thank donald trump

buy a maga cap
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JustMyOpinion posted...

FLUFFYGERM posted...

JustMyOpinion posted...

That'd be one hell of an "investment" to get a 50% return in one year. Sounds more like wild speculation.

I mean you would've made 32% if you bought UNH stock a year ago and 41% if you bought Amazon stock and 300% if you bought some Ripple XRP.

Just a little bit of cherry picking going on here.

to be fair just a straight investment in the market would have made you 20% in 2017

M_Live posted...

I admittedly don't know much about taxes, so I've always wondered, why can't the government just take the appropriate amount of money from us each year? Like, why go through all the hassle?

The idea is that you set your withholding level appropriately, because your income tax doesn't know that you qualify for deductions for house loans, spent x amount on charity, etc.
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M_Live posted...

I admittedly don't know much about taxes, so I've always wondered, why can't the government just take the appropriate amount of money from us each year? Like, why go through all the hassle?

Two big reasons. There's so many variables, most people's taxes need to be calculated on a case by case basis. The other reason is that the government wants you to get a big tax return, again, for two reasons. Reason 2 subreason 1 is that the bigger the return you get, the bigger the tax free loan you gave the government. Reason 2 subreason 2 is that the bigger the returns are, the more people think they're getting free money from the government instead of their own bash back, and don't look at how much they actually DID pay in taxes, just what they got back.
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JustMyOpinion posted...

FLUFFYGERM posted...

JustMyOpinion posted...

That'd be one hell of an "investment" to get a 50% return in one year. Sounds more like wild speculation.

I mean you would've made 32% if you bought UNH stock a year ago and 41% if you bought Amazon stock and 300% if you bought some Ripple XRP.

Just a little bit of cherry picking going on here.

I mean, I mentioned stuff I invested in but it's definitely possible. And if you wanted to play it absolutely safe like @lesidesi mentioned you could've made 20% just coasting in index funds.

Which would've been $4800 instead of $4000.
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I explained the concept of "giving the gov't an interest free loan" to a coworker who regularly gets a couple grand each year and he told me that he's fine with the gov't getting some extra cash
like, I get that you can support higher taxes but that was a bit far even for me
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M_Live posted...

I admittedly don't know much about taxes, so I've always wondered, why can't the government just take the appropriate amount of money from us each year? Like, why go through all the hassle?

So you overpay them and they can use the extra money as an interest-free loan you gave them.

I mean there's things like deductions and investments as well. But really it's so they can screw people over that don't want to figure out what they owe themselves (or pay a person to figure it out).

But really there's too many variables for them to figure out every single person's tax bill. We'd be paying a lot more in taxes to pay for that many government accountants.
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Government also prefers higher withholding as it can be hard to collect from someone with a balance owning.
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it's lunacy to rely on the government to correctly calculate your taxes
you're literally relying on government employees that couldn't hack it in industry jobs

The government doesnt collect your tax payment. Your employer does based on how many dependents you indicate plus any additional you opt for. After tax and deductions (not including credits) any refund was an overpayment.

The people who say its a loan are implying you should change your paycheck deductions to an amount that just barely pays your taxes while maximizing your take home pay.

Personally I like overpaying a bit and getting that little faux-bonus every year. A couple thousand over the course of a year wasnt going to make a difference to me, but all at once like that becomes useful. Its like a mini savings account that took zero effort on my part.
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Investing actually would be the smart thing to do... We're going to have a lot of growth with the lower corporate tax rate
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I would have gotten a couple hundred if I didn't owe the health care penalty.
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Behaviorism posted...

Here come the save and invest comments

lolz
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