{"id":1242,"date":"2008-02-18T12:11:00","date_gmt":"2008-02-18T20:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/2008\/02\/18\/dead-presidents-day\/"},"modified":"2008-02-18T12:11:00","modified_gmt":"2008-02-18T20:11:00","slug":"dead-presidents-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/2008\/02\/18\/dead-presidents-day\/","title":{"rendered":"Dead President&#8217;s Day"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>D and I did our taxes yesterday (why wait?), and the good news is, we got a significant refund from the state of California.  The bad news is, we had to pay more than expected to the federal government because of the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hrblock.com\/taxes\/tax_tips\/tax_planning\/amt.html\">Alternative Minimum Tax<\/a>.  Boo AMT.  <span style=\"font-style:italic;\">Boo!<\/span><\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s more annoying than anything else, because we knew we were going to make a lot less money in 2007 than 2006, and have been paying estimated taxes every quarter.  We had calculated a 90% target, but AMT added a few thousand dollars to our total taxes.  Ironically, we suspect that the trigger in this case was the large deduction we took because of our state taxes paid for 2006.<\/p>\n<p>Other IRS-related lessons we learned recently:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Know how to fill out your <a href=\"http:\/\/www.irs.gov\/instructions\/i1040sd\/index.html\">Schedule D<\/a> correctly.<\/li>\n<li>H&amp;R Block&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/shop.taxcut.com\/store\/taxcut\/DisplayHomePage\">TaxCut<\/a> software is more user-friendly than <a href=\"http:\/\/www.taxact.com\/products\/all_compare.asp\">TaxAct<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>If we ever get rich, we are definitely hiring an accountant.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Fortunately, we&#8217;re going to make a lot less money this year, so we should avoid a lot of these tax traps next time around.  And by then, we may be living in a place with no state income tax.  That would be nice.  Get off my lawn, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.snout.org\/hotsheet\/2007\/03\/render-unto-caesar.html\">Caesar<\/a>!  And take those damn kids with you!<\/p>\n<p>~CKL<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>D and I did our taxes yesterday (why wait?), and the good news is, we got a significant refund from the state of California. The bad news is, we had to pay more than expected to the federal government because&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[1,133],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1242","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1242","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1242"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1242\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1242"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}