The Tax Clipper
As a service to my customers I have made
arrangements for you to pay me online securely by direct payment
from your bank account or by use of a credit card through Intuit.
You may do this whether the bill is sent by email, mail, or
hand delivered. You just
remit the amount shown through PaymentNetwork, a service from Intuit
(makers of TurboTax, QuickBooks and Quicken) that lets you pay bills
online for free. To do so, please visit
https://ipn.intuit.com/, sign up for a Personal Account and send
payment to my email address:
dwmtax@gmail.com.
Please note this is a special address used through this service.
This works somewhat like Paypal, which you may already be
familiar with from Ebay, but has the added benefit that your payment
is recorded automatically in my QuickBooks program.
Once you sign up, you can use the account to pay other bills
as well. Your bank and credit card information are held securely by
Intuit.
Our tax software has a program that allows us
to deduct fees from your refund.
This costs you extra money ($15).
The remainder of the refund can then be direct deposited or
loaded onto a Debit card ($30), rather large for such small amounts.
There is no charge to you and very little to me for Intuit’s
services. I feel that is
a much better deal. If
you don’t have online access, you can as always just send a check
through the mail.
I will also have the ability this year for you to sign the tax forms using a signature pad. This way the signatures can be printed out with the forms and saved as part of the pdf of the return. That means that I will finally be all paperless. I realized a couple of years ago that I was actually spending more time handling and filing paper than I was doing the return, what with dcrs, acks, returns, w2s etc needing to be filed and saved for each return. By the end of the season the office had degenerated into hopeless chaos, and I would spend days trying to put everything away. Those days are now over. If you need copies of your return, just drop an email and it can all be back to you quickly, and you can print all the copies you want. I'm actually looking forward to the 2012 season.
As you may have noticed, Congress has been at a stalemate this year. So very little in the way of tax legislation has been passed.
As this election year unfolds, we're going to hear more and more arguments about the tax rates that are being paid and whose paying them. We keep hearing that most Americans don't pay income tax. We all know that isn't true. Many people make less than the minimum amount that you have to have to pay taxes because the minimum wage was never indexed to inflation, but most of those pay Social security taxes which take a bigger bite from their paychecks than income taxes do anyway. This is a spurious argument. As far as rates go, it's only the "effective" tax rate that matters. This is not a bracket and represents what you actually pay. When John Kerry ran for president his wife Teresa Heinz posted her tax returns, her effective tax rate was only 12.5%. Guess what? Because the Bush tax cuts did not expire as scheduled her rate is probably lower than that now. Why? Because the cuts were back loaded into the last year. When they were extended the bonus was added for those two years too. So she's most likely paying less. Mitt Romney says he pays 15%. I suspect that is a total lie. Most of my customers (even the ones with the lowest income) pay an effective rate of 15-18%, because they do not have all the loopholes and breaks that Mrs. Kerry and Mr. Romney can use. Anybody think this is fair? We badly need tax reform that rewards job creation instead of accounting tricks and capital speculation.
Once again tax day falls on Emancipation day. Don't get too excited, you won't get the day off. It's a holiday only in Washington DC. So the government gets the day off, but you don't. All you get is the opportunity to wait until April 17 to file your taxes. Maybe you should ask your congressman why he and the IRS have a day off that you don't get.
On the morning of December 23, the Senate approved by voice vote in pro forma session, and the House approved by unanimous consent, H.R. 3765, the "Temporary Payroll Tax Cut Continuation Act of 2011." The bill was signed into law by President Obama shortly thereafter. This long argued and stalemated bill kept the payroll tax reduction in place for another two months. This is, of course, a nightmare for companies that produce payroll software and increases uncertainty in the economy in general. It does let you keep the extra money that you've become accustomed to each week. Congress never seems to appreciate that giving money away is easy. Taking it back is almost impossible. They also seem to forget all about balanced budgets, when they hear "TAX CUT". Unfortunately this did not extend some tax cuts connected with it, but those will probably be extended and made retroactive as well at a later date. This includes the 100% bonus depreciation scheduled to be reduced to 50%. That's still a good deal for any needed business equipment.
One of the things Mitt Romney and others have been thriving off are low rates for capital gains. Those may be going away after 2012. So if you are lucky enough to actually have capital gains on anything, it may be a good time to think about cashing in while those rates are low.
People receiving Social security got a cost of living adjustment this year. Likewise most tax related items such as brackets and retirement contributions maximums indexed to inflation have also increased. You don't even have to do anything to take advantage of that.
More as news unfolds.