Re-Do - - For USA tax payers; How's your "tax cut" working out?

I haven’t finished mine, but my parents lost at least $8,000. My Mom has been mad about some $4,000 payment that her and my father had gotten back for many years…

About the same amount.

Haven’t gotten my numbers yet.

Still sucks. I have to may $2600 more this year than last.

@janbb Come back with final numbers.

Our refund was significantly smaller, due to historical donations to non-profits and other deductions not allowed this year.

My refund was about the same and I estimate I paid about 3k less this year. I took the standard deduction.

We paid more because we were not alowed to deduct our California State taxes ($65K) from our Federal Tax. Had to paid Uncle Sugar $51K.

I got way more back than usual and I made way more than the previous year. Guess I’m one of the lucky few.

I’m in a tortured state right now, because my tax preparer screwed up. She told me I owe $9k! That’s because I owe the $8k ACA subsidy. I had asked in November if I was getting too close to the threshold, she said I was safe. Not true. I don’t think she ever did the calculations to check it. I have spent probably over 30 hours reading tax laws myself, and torturing a friend of a friend who is in the crunch of tax time herself, to try to squeak out bits of tax law information.

None of that has anything to do with Trump, except to say that maybe with the rules before Trump I could have itemized and been ok? I really have no idea. I think it is doubtful.

I think even after I file my taxes I will have no idea if Trump helped or hurt me this year. How the ACA is set up, and the incompetence of my tax preparer, hurt me. No matter what, she cost me $6k in the best scenario, even if I do some last minute tax vehicles to help me.

The ACA $8k is different than the normal tax burden, because it is not a percentage of income, it is not like a tax bracket.

I could give you more information and more numbers, but it would get lengthy and I think it is unnecessary.

I learned a lot for next year.

Also, I learned the same lesson AGAIN the only person who can really take care of you is you. The professionals get it wrong all too often. I’m getting used to feeling disappointed in life, but it makes me have more and more trust issues.

Our tax process in America is terrible. My tax return is a ridiculous amount of pages in my opinion. It’s not like I made a ton of money, I didn’t.

I have savings from our previous, more lucrative, life, so I can afford $6K mistakes and surprises, but if I were a young middle class family it would be devastating.

My husband talk about dropping health insurance an risking it. Our deductible it $15k anyway.

@JLeslie I’m sure that with your health issues, you don’t want to drop your coverage. Even though there is a $15,000 deductible, a major medical incident would impoverish you – as it would almost anybody.

@janbb I’m not dropping it, I only meant my husband wants to drop it.

Actually, probably, even if I had a serious medical issue I’d still most likely, statistically, be better off dropping the coverage, but I keep it. It’s horrible.

The health coverage causes my stress. It’s ridiculous. The doctors see BCBS and charge us the most they can. Then I tell them I pay everything, and they say, “but you have insurance,” and then I explain my deductible, and some of them lower their fee. It’s disgusting. These are often times doctors who don’t get the money directly, they work for university medical groups or other large groups.

Paid $250 for a doctor to literally do NOTHING, told me I shouldn’t have been referred to her.

If I pay $14k for insurance, or if I pay nothing and have an incident that costs $50k and haven’t paid the premiums for a few years I’m close to even. If I need continuing care I can always get insurance next enrollment period.

I’m not even talking about deductibles at all here.

Insurance premiums a huge amount.

I’ve paid much less getting the subsidy, so basically you and everyone else is paying the system for me. Paying BCBS to hike premiums they don’t need to as evidenced by their increasing profits.

Let’s go back to the tax topic rather than ACA. People who are not on ACA almost never have first hand experience with it, and don’t understand the pitfalls for people who hover in the $60k AGI area. It’s a nightmare. $60k is not a lot of income for a household, it’s pretty average. Media just talks about people who are insured, which doesn’t really tell the story.

I guess I’m a little late to the party, @Tropical_Willie ! But thanks for asking.
I have seen no benefit from any tax cuts. My self-employment taxes are just the same as they were last year and years before that. I did get a tax refund last year that I didn’t ask for but there were no explanations as to how it all figured in to my tax payment figures past and current, so I’m expecting a letter from them, telling me how I screwed up but not telling me how they screwed me up.

Read the ENDING !!

BOHICA – - Bend over here it comes again.