How many of you paid federal taxes this year?

We got a refund... we usually do but this one was smaller because we reduced withholding.

Mortgage interest deduction helped a lot. No childcare deduction.

So was the refund the full amount that you had withheld or just partial?

I paid Federal taxes this year.

Cycloptichorn

You really want to know how many people owed extra federal taxes on top
of the federal taxes the government took directly from their paychecks.

I had to pay a couple thousand more than was deducted from my check.

I am disatisifed with my taxes, not because I think they're too much, but because I feel like our government is wasting my money. I also feel that I'm paying a much higher percentage of my income, and really not getting much for my investment. I'm not looking for handouts, I'm just looking for more of my fellow countrymen to chip in their fair share (those on each end of the income brackets, rich pay too little for what they get, poor pay too little for what they get).

I had a huge deduction from mortgage interest, which I would be willing to give up if we can do away with the stupid child deductions too. Hell, let's get rid of all deductions.

Hell, let's just adopt the Elimination of the U.S. Tax Return Act of 2012.

Hmm. Not sure I follow. To use fake numbers, if the total withholding was $10,000, we owed $9,500 and got $500 back.

Whereas in previous years we had $12,000 withheld, owed $9,500 and got $2,500 back. The main difference from previous years (read: since E.G. has had this job and we've owned this house) was how much we had withheld.

She's asking about your tax liability after allowable deductions. Did you have any tax liability or did you get all your withholding back?

Yes, I had a tax liability this year.

Ok, so you paid a total of $9500 -- that's what I'm after. That's what I'm after. Last year we got everything back, this year we got most of everything back.

maporsche, you are single with no kids, yes? I remember feeling like i was getting totally screwed on taxes until we bought a house and had kids, at which point we started paying next to nothing.

My feeling is that the mortgage interest deduction funnels tax revenues to banks and might have made a noticeable difference to our federal coffers during the housing boom -- especially with all the high interest, low equity loans. It's just a feeling though, so I thought I'd bring it here for discussion. Personally, I'd rather pay that money to the government if it meant universal health care and better schools. Not sure it would, though.

Thanks, JPB. Your language is much more precise than mine.

You said it better than I...Thanks

My mortgage is paid off, and even when I had one there wasn't enough of a deduction to itemize.

It was a bank foreclosure, and bought it in 1991 for something like $50k.

about 3/4's of my property tax rate is based on that original figure, adjusted each year of course, still very low....the other 1/4 is based on the extra square footage we added in the last few years.

I've never had enough deductions to itemize.

We had to pay taxes this year as well. I have no idea how much as my better half handles the money.

I havent had enough deductions to itimize for 20 years. Short form. Had to pay income tax on 1/2 of my soc. sec. for the last 12 years in addition to my regular income.

Personally, I'd rather see a system that encourages savings rather than debt. Our current system rewards taxpayers for having the highest possible mortgage they can carry by allowing interest payments to be deducted from their income for tax purposes. On the other side, we add any interest or dividends earned from savings and investments onto our other income and tax it accordingly.

We encourage debt at both the personal and national level. We've already faced a crisis in the credit industry on the personal level. My fear is that we're about to face a similar debt crisis on a national level and we have ZERO dollars saved to pay for it.

I agree.

I'd rather see The FairTax plan adopted so that we take home 100% of what we earn.
Put a % into savings and only pay tax on what you buy. Simple and effective.
The FairTax plan would turn our economy around rather quickly.