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For those that itemize deductions..

Nitemare

Nitemare

Lifer
What all do you itemize? I'm married, go to school part-time and paying big time to Uncle Sam.

Both my wife and I claim married with 0 exemptions on our paperwork with our employers and we still have to pay alot at the end of the year.

The lowest I have after taking the standard deduction(married w/ 2 exemtions) and subtracting tuition is over a grand in the red. I don't have a mortgage payment(I rent)..so any ideas on what I can do to itemize and save some money?
 
Unless are paying on a mortgage there are very few options on additional deductions. Most of the other ones have limits on the amount you have to spend before they are deductible. Mortgages kick ass, I've been married 6 years, and the two years in an apartment we had to pay or broke even, since owning a home we are saving thousands.
 
Ditto to the mortgage comment. Unless you have a mortgage, kids, a loan payment with massive interest, or some other large itemized deduction I think a lot of people come out pretty much the same (if not slightly better) with the standard deduction. I'm looking forward to our first FULL year of home ownership. Now that we know we'll be itemizing, we've also kept better track of all our smaller deductibles this year. They're not much individually, but together they should add up to several hundred dollars (on top of the mortgage deduction.)
 
Hmm...do you have an auto tag tax in NC? This is deductible.

Might be worth it to run the numbers as if you maxed out your IRAs for the year and see if that would help (will lower your taxable income by the amount contributed).

Other than that, I can't think of anything. Being able to write off all the stuff associated with owning a house definitely saves my butt tax-wise. Are you in a position to look into purchasing a house or condo? Might be worth it in the long run as I don't think property values in RTP are going down any time soon. I've had friends work deals with parents or other relatives where they have an agreement to repay money invested in a property multiplied by the %apppreciation of the house when sold. (ie- folks give you $10k for downpayment help, house appreciates by say, %20....you repay folks $10k + %20 upon sale of property). Just a thought.....getting into a property is a huge pain and expensive up front, but the tax benefits are worth it IMO.

Other than that, a quick consultation with an accountant might be well worth your time.

Fausto
 
Donate stuff that you don't need to charity: old clothes that are still wearable, old cars that still run.

Everyone wins, you get a deduction for getting rid of stuff that you can do without, and the charity gets stuff that it can use.

But, the mortgage and property tax are the big ones.

Jeremy
 
Mortgage Interest, Property Tax, Student Loan Interest, Charitable Donations, Vehicle License Fee (CA anyway), and maybe some other smaller deductions that I'm forgetting. But those above add up to a lot of tax savings...

-Pak
 
Unless you have expenses for the deduction areas that exceed $6000K (est) you are up a creek.

Tuition, Child care and moving to a new job is about the only way you can reduce your tax burden.

If both of you claimed 0 you should not be in trouble. Punch your numbers into a tax program to ensure that you did not make a mistake.

If you did some free lance work, then you may have some leeway via business deductions against you overall income.
 
sounds like your employers are not taking enough money out for taxes. You should think about buying a house though, lots of them out where I live. If I'm not mistaken you live somewhere near me in Durham. I just bought a decent 3br/2ba house off of Barbee Rd for $120K. Mortgage + PMI + taxes + home owners ins = $950 a month. There are smaller 2br houses nearby in the same subdivision at around $105K.
Also charitable contributions help out. You can deduct the taxes levied by the county on your car as well.
 


<< If you did some free lance work, then you may have some leeway via business deductions against you overall income. >>



That's what I did. I write off about $200(mortgage, utilities, property tax, ect) a month for my home office deduction, half of my milage on my vehicle is business related so half of all of my vehicle expenses(monthly payments, maintanence, gas, insurance, registration, ect) are split between business and personal. Factor that in with the interest on my mortgage that goes twords income reduction, as well as 401k lowering my income, and I'm doing OK.
 
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