US INCOME TAX!

hmm that makes sense. alright, last question (thanks a lot btw) - I'm looking at the 1099-MISC, and I know she gets to deduct her books from this...but where?

Wait, I think you might be confused. The 1099-Misc is a form she would have received from the school IF her payments were considered non-employee compensation. I would be surprised if that were the case.

in summary:

if 1099-Misc, then Schedule C
if 1098-T scholarship/fellowship > tuition/fees, then line 7 wages

okay yeah I was actually on the school website and was looking at 'Other Stipends' and not 'Grad School Stipends'. would her deductions just be included in regular deductions and thus still not outweigh the standard deduction (being sig less than $5800) - I think that was what I originally assumed.

also on the university's website it says 'Tax Document Issued by the University: None' for grad stipend

what she would do would be:

1. calculate the difference between the amount reported as scholarship/fellowship income and tuition/fees paid as per the form received from the school.

2. figure out what other expenses she had that are deductible from that income. This is one of those special situations that has its own rules/worksheet

3. deduct those additional expenses

4. report that amount (income - school reported tuition & fees - other deductible expenses) on line 7 of the 1040.

xp - that's probably because it's reported on the 1098-T, which all students receive.

keep seeing this as INCOME TAXI

https://www.ecsi.net/img/1098t_2011.jpg

the form should look like this.

the amount in box 5 would include her stipend and tuition payments.

okay I think a lot of the confusion is coming from the fact that they must have sent it to the wrong address or something. I will tell her to get one asap. thanks a lot sarah!

no prob. it's likely it's something she could download, as opposed to waiting for it to be mailed. At least that's how UC Berkeley does it, as you probably know.

not sure, the school site says 'we can mail you a new one', but it's possible they can get it sooner. I think we just figured if something like this existed she would have gotten it.

You can also directly check http://www.1098t.com/ if the school she goes to is registered with the site.

hmm that might be nifty thank you

does anyone know which form I gotta use if I made, say, $400 chump change besides my salary? 1040 not 1040A, right?

(yes, I report every dime, I can't do time)

if it's only $400, you can call it miscellaneous income on line 21. But yeah, that requires the 1040.

@self-employed folks: is there a good rule of thumb for calculating quarterly estimated taxes? my income will probably vary over the course of the year and will likely be quite different from last year, so i don't think just dividing what i payed in 2011 by four really makes sense.

Glad I re-read the rules on the 1099-G because I could have done myself out of a refund.

No help here, I'm afraid. I like the estimated quarterlies that my tax preparer has set up -- they usually leave me with a refund that covers my April payment and most of my June payment, so I don't have to worry about it until the fall, which is when I get my biggest paychecks of the year.

xxp - it depends on how much you net, and what other deductions you have. Self-employment tax used to 15.3%, but now I think it's down to 13.3% because of the payroll tax cuts. So, you have to figure that plus your regular income tax rate.

However, you want to pay at least as much as you owe at the end of this year, unless you know your income is going to be significantly lower.

Was helping a friend with turbotax and found out that it had apparently "upgraded" him to the home and business service for $99 (fed only), which he clearly did not need as a single, childless retail worker with no assets or outside income. What's worse, there is no way to downgrade once you "upgrade." Seems pretty fucked up.

Did it charge him $99 or was he upgraded for "free"?

no it charged him.

well, if it makes him feel any better he can deduct that next year

only if he itemizes deductions

fuck this shit

thankfully my day job cut into what i owed from freelancing, cuz o_O

^^ i was freelancing all year and i've wound up having to dip into what i'd set aside to keep myself afloat these last 3 months, now i'm filing an extension and still owe in the four figures

closer to 5 figures, even

and fucking turbotax trying to rip me off for my last hundred dollars til payday in a month, fuck you

Same boat as you HOOS. I owed 4 figures. Still unemployed. Had to borrow money from my moms to pay for it. Thankfully I lost my last shred of dignity about 4 months ago, so I didn't feel too bad. But that freelancing bullshit is for the birds.

oh yeah, also got stuck paying 80 on HR Block because of the "contractor" thing (should have been 40, but I had to pay again for Virginia, for which I owed and received nothing).

Hey you know that thing where some people will joke with you about well hey you're married now so you lost your freedom but at least you will save money on taxes? Well those people are filthy bastard liars.

heard it was teh gays that ruined marriage or something so its probably there fawlt

It's like having showtunes stolen from us all over again

you need some babies

RIP

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJOjTNuuEVw

HR Block sucks the big one!

Realizing I owed, um, more money than I expected a few years ago thanks to freelancing was a very rude awakening. I started to set aside a little bit from each check for this purpose. Still sucked.

I miss my flexible spending account from my last job. That was a nice little tax break. I still feel like I'm being cheated a little when I have to pay co-pays non-pre-tax. Your qualified medical expenses have to be really damn high before they count as an itemized deduction.

H2, your friend could dispute the charge through his/her credit card.

got this off in time and somehow finagled it so that what I owed to state was offset by what I'm getting back from federal. not entirely positive what I did with claiming a home office deduction was right, but nothing I could find really said otherwise (I had to be available 24/7 at my last job); it saved my ass, thankfully.

if you were freelancing schedule c is your best friend.

tvs become 'computer monitors', for example.

do you actually want to know whether you did it right? it sounds like you don't really want to know.

When I was a waiter at a sort of nice restaurant, a wine rep told us to save receipts for eating out and liquor purchases and deduct them as career education expenses. I did it and the person at H&R Block went along with it. Seems pretty questionable.

that is only deductible if you itemize/file Schedule A. It is a bit questionable - certainly not all restaurant meals and booze purchases would be legit.

When I went on a Roadfood tour with Jane & Michael Stern in 2010, he was in line next to me at the New Mexico State Fair and got a receipt for a piece of pie. I had a bit of a blinding OMG moment and said "everything you eat is a deductible expense, isn't it?" and he just looked at me and smiled real big.

there were a couple years when i made several hundred extra dollars doing music writing. it occurred to me at tax time that, if i'd had a receipt for every single thing i'd ever done for fun in that year i could have made out like a bandit. but alas.

I think the classic question is really not whether you "can" do all that kind of stuff, but whether you're setting yourself for eventual audit. The more you do, the more likely an audit.