This year it cost me $154 to file my taxes with TurboTax. The reason it was high is that I have investment income. My net profit from Ebay sales was only $145 in 2023, so I didn’t bother filing it as small business income. My primary source of income during the year was interest and dividends. The amount was under the $13,850 standard deduction, so I did not have to pay any federal income tax. I had to add $1890 in municipal bond income, which was excluded from federal tax to my state income which means that I owe them $24. I guess the title of this post should be “I almost paid no income tax”. It is good to pay no federal tax on my income, but the $154 paid to TurboTax felt like a tax.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Since there was no earned income, there was no tax refund for me. We manage to live on $1200 per month, but it is very difficult. Having a house mate who helps pay for groceries, applying for healthcare assistance, and getting a property tax refund that covered 75% of the tax bill helped. I wasn’t able to get in on the Affordable Connectivity Program, so I switched to a lower data speed to reduce our monthly Internet bill. It requires continuous cost cutting and money management to keep up with inflation. As the cost of everything keeps going up, I have had to look for creative ways to save money (see my posts under topic: “Money Saving Tips” on this blog). <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The hardest part is not being able to travel, go out to eat, go to a show, or buy new clothes. Most everything we buy is on sale or used. Back when I had a job, I was always careful to watch the amount of investment income during the year. I didn’t want to get put in a higher tax bracket and have to pay tax instead of getting a refund. Now that I am semi-retired and waiting to go on social security, I still have to watch the amount of investment income I have coming in. Too much income and I have to pay taxes, or potentially lose some of the benefits of having a low annual income. Once I start social security, it will be difficult to avoid income tax. But that’s okay because the extra money will help make life a little easier. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This year it cost me $154 to file my taxes with TurboTax. The reason it was high is that I have investment income. My net profit from Ebay sales was only $145 in 2023, so I didn’t bother filing it as small business income. My primary source of income during<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.budgethomepage.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/766"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.budgethomepage.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.budgethomepage.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.budgethomepage.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.budgethomepage.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=766"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.budgethomepage.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/766\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":768,"href":"http:\/\/www.budgethomepage.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/766\/revisions\/768"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.budgethomepage.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=766"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.budgethomepage.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=766"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.budgethomepage.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=766"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}