Parents still not done the taxes… 👀
I just did mine yesterday, so I’m not much better than your parents. In my defense, my partner and I are self employed, and we really didn’t want to pay the government. Although through a lot of very creative but legal bookkeeping and paperwork, we managed to get what we owed in taxes down to $79.
Welp I’ll have to do it for them like… right now… I’m eating breakfast rn and mom’s keep nagging me to like hurry up and do the taxes…
I mean too bad, her house her rules… 🤷♂️ I dealing with depression and am a dependent so I have no choice but to do whatever they ask
For me, it depends if I’m getting a refund or not. If I’m getting a refund, usually by mid February after all my paperwork gets in. If I owe money, I’m waiting until April.
I remember growing up my parents would procrastinate and then crunch to get them done on 4/15. It seemed like they did this every damn year.
Me? I usually do end of February or maybe the beginning of March. Takes a bit to get all my documentation, so no point in dealing with it much before that.
I don’t think it’s possible to do taxes in January, most places don’t have documents ready before the end of the month. I had to wait a few extra weeks for the documents from my investment account too, so not everything is always available on Jan 31.
I did mine in February this year. I’ll probably wait and do it later next year, like mid-March, as I ended up missing a document that would have slightly increased my state return (not enough to go through the headache of fixing it).
Last year, I needed an extension, as it was first time doing it myself and my situation was fairly complex.
W2 is usually available by mid January, with the standard deduction being so high that’s all a lot of people need.
I don’t think I’ve ever gotten my W2 before the end of January
It depends a lot on the company, my company usually has them by middle of the month. One year they got them out in the first or second week and I had my taxes done before the first half of January was over.
No I mostly have to wait for my banks to send out 1099ints so I end up doing state and federal taxes in early February now.
That’s great, I’d love to have my docs that early! I think I had to wait til nearly the end of February for some of my 1099s this year.
Honestly really surprised to find everyone here all do their taxes so quickly. I also did all of mine as early as I could (mid-Feb) but…
The only few American friends whom I’m close enough to talk about this, they all ignore it until the very last minute. So either late March/April, or not at all
I do mine as soon as I have all my W-2s. It takes like 10 minutes. I don’t know why there is a trope about them being hard or confusing. They’re not, unless you’re trying to itemize everything.
If you only have W-2s it is easy. But there are lots of other things that can make it a mess. If you have a business, do stock trading, use crypto, or itemize (less common now), then it can take a fair bit of time.
Its hard cuz my parents run small bussiness and you got all those weird additional forms… Not as simple as just scan and file.
Also theres a thing where you have to file separately with the city.
Yeah. I’m self employed and some of my income comes from a contract with a religious nonprofit. My wife has three jobs and one of them is for a nonprofit. We have complicatons from certain expenses too, even though we don’t itemize we still end up with a number of extra forms to fill out.
We haven’t been in a hurry this year. It’s a pain and our kids are aging out of the tax credits. We usually feed and house four extra humans (three are ours) but only our 16 year old gives us a credit on last year’s taxes. We’re going to get a few hundred back but we just didn’t have urgency to file. We’re pretty much done, I think we’ll submit it tomorrow.
So not more complicated than in most European nations?
Here I have a pre filled form, check the numbers and done.
We did ours as soon as we had the documents, around mid Feb. Despite how incredibly awful everything is lately, there’s still child tax credits and daycare credits from smarter times. No reason to procrastinate that, especially as we can invest it in a long term fund for the kids.
Is the US tax year just… The year?
The UK tax year is the 6th-5th of April. I wonder how that happened…
(… Quarter days? And switching between the Julian and gregorian calendars apparently)
Is the US tax year just… The year?
Yes, and the deadline for filing is April 15th
The issue is you have to wait to get your tax docs in the mail. I got my W-2s (proof of wages/income from employment) sometime in mid-January, and I filed my state and federal taxes 3rd week of January.
However, my municipal taxes require me to receive a paper from them through the mail. I didn’t get it until march. It had errors (as usual), and I’ve just been like, I’m not dealing with that. Last year it was also months late because I didn’t want to deal with them.
Some providers do digital distribution now. I didn’t get any physical documents from my employer or investment account, just PDFs this year.
i set things up so I’m close to net zero, owe the state a tiny amount, tiny refund from the feis. There is no hurry, but I want them done late March just in case there is something weird I need to figure out (which has happened a couple times over the decades I’ve been eoing them.)
For me, it depends on when all of our paperwork is in.
Generally, the W-2s from the employers don’t come in until the end of January, then I have to wait on my stock account. My wife had unemployment last year, and dividends from an oil field.
All of that has to be in before we can file.
Technically we were ready mid-February but got laid out by hospitalizations. I think we filed mid-March?
Before I had to wait on slow 1099s: as soon as the IRS and the software I used had the forms all set up.
Now: whenever the last slow-assed company sends me a 1099 which is sometime in March null
I want to do things ASAP and have them done, so that’s hard. As an overseas citizen, I do get an automatic 6-month extension, but I’ve never had to come anywhere close to the normal deadline, even.
@DeathByBigSad I usually try and do them early. Not Jan 1, it’s near impossible to get your paperwork before mid-January, but usually it’s late January/early February. I did wait until April this year, though
You can’t do them in January let alone New Year’s Day as most tax forms have until the end of January to be sent to taxpayers.
For my family, normally early March after all the paperwork has been received and I find time to sit and look at boring shit.
This year, I started around then and saw that we owed federal a bunch and I stopped as that fragile motivation was now gone and I wasn’t in a hurry to send trumpy money for ballrooms, legal defense, bombs, ice, etc.
Finally went back to it last night and finished up tonight. I’m getting roughly the same amount back from my state.
