Taxed
You don't have to be an employee of the IRS, the United States Postal Service, Jackson Hewitt, H&R Block, or any other tax preparation company to know that April 15 is a terrible day. Like most good academic deadlines, it's stressful, unwavering, and feels horribly unfair and unnecessary.
This year has been a particularly tricky one for me because of the move to Pennsylvania for grad school, a change that has not only necessitated multiple state returns (which are a bitch to figure out, even with tax-for-dummies-like-me software like TurboTax) but has also, as far as I can figure, pushed me into a higher tax bracket.
Forgive me for challenging the greater gods of the Internal Revenue Service, but are you fucking kidding me? Without delving into the specifics of my financial situation, I think it's fairly safe to assume that, as a graduate student, with particular emphasis on student, I don't make a whole lot of money. And sure, I made more this year than I ever have in one year. (Though it sure doesn't feel that way -- damn you, rent!) But I still find it hard to believe that my Penn State stipend pushed me so far into a new bracket that my refund should plummet like it did.
And that's before I even got to the state returns. I first attempted to straighten out my tax situation over spring break, and found myself increasingly frustrated by my multi-state situation. The Federal return, unfair though I deemed it to be, still made sense and calculated the same refund every time I did it. No reason to believe I'd done anything wrong.
It was dealing with state taxes that totally threw me. First I tried claiming part-time residence in Pennsylvania. When they insisted that I absolutely must have some income from my farm, I abandoned that route. I read a little more carefully and realized, to my then-pleasure, that being a college student meant that I didn't have to claim residency while at school, so I could simply be a New Jersey resident (a fact that, tax complications aside, never ceases to make me smile). I presumed this would make things much easier.
Au contraire, mon frere! Because now we're entering the world of the nonresident return, which is fairly complicated when you consider that relatively equal parts of my income this year came from New Jersey sources (two W-2s from NJ employers) and from Penn State (one additional W-2). That, and apparently Pennsylvania and New Jersey have a reciprocal tax agreement with each other, so that income earned in one state while a resident of the other isn't subject to double-taxing. How convenient!
But navigating the waters of how to apply this agreement, and how to qualify which sources of income should be taxed by which state is, for lack of a better term, taxing -- not only to me, but to my illustrious tax-prep software. I came up with several very different scenarios while at home: one had me owe New Jersey $95, one had me owe them $0, one gave me a refund of $118! And this didn't even include my attempts at a Pennsylvania nonresident return quite yet, as I wasn't sure it was necessary.
As soon as TurboTax came to the MacBook (and, subsequently, back to State College), the solution was cleared up: yes, I need a Pennsylvania return. And despite my work at home assuring me that I would owe no Pennsylvania taxes, no sooner did I crunch the numbers than I owed Pennsylvania a staggering $283, on top of the $95 I owed New Jersey.
This, I deduced, was fucked up. That was more than my Federal refund, and thusly, it made no sense at all.
The end result of all this rigmarole was that I claimed (I believe properly) that all my income is to be taxed by New Jersey, so none of my New Jersey-earned income is subject to PA taxes, nor is my stipend subject to PA taxes (the W-2 says so). So I owe Pennsylvania nothing, and I still owe New Jersey $95 -- which, still, makes no sense to me. But at this point, I've decided that I can't put this off anymore and that maybe, if there's a just and loving god somewhere, the State of New Jersey may somehow realize that I'm a poor, hard-working kid who's gotten screwed by the tax system, and maybe I'll get a surprise refund after the fact.
Yeah, and maybe the Cubs will win a World Series sometime this century. I'll believe both when I see them. (Caveat: Sorry, Mary.)
All of this has me thinking, however, why April, wondrous month of springtime renewal and amusement park re-openings and glorious, glorious baseball that it is, should feature so many unfortunate days. (Remember April Fool's Day?) Hell, even last year, when the dreaded thesis bore down on me, I didn't quite have this sense of emptiness and ennui as I do this time around. Why should that be?
I posited this question to my friend Alicia, who, even in comparison to me and my frustrations, has been having an abysmal last few days. She's been sick, stressed out with too much work and too little time to do it (I'll be there soon, too; it just hasn't hit me yet), and this morning ran into a little car trouble that, after a quick diagnostic check at the local repair shop, quickly morphed into a lot of car trouble. She gets the whole April malaise just as badly as I do, if not worse. I listened patiently to the tale of her plights, offering what little useless advice I could, then accepted her invitation to share my own.
Upon hearing of my tax struggles, she reminded me of one crucial point I'd forgotten: her father is an accountant.
And, naturally, since every accountant on Earth is pulling their hair out today, she could offer little more than, "I'd have you call my dad, but it's, you know, April 15. Live and learn, eh?"
At least now I know for next year.
This year has been a particularly tricky one for me because of the move to Pennsylvania for grad school, a change that has not only necessitated multiple state returns (which are a bitch to figure out, even with tax-for-dummies-like-me software like TurboTax) but has also, as far as I can figure, pushed me into a higher tax bracket.
Forgive me for challenging the greater gods of the Internal Revenue Service, but are you fucking kidding me? Without delving into the specifics of my financial situation, I think it's fairly safe to assume that, as a graduate student, with particular emphasis on student, I don't make a whole lot of money. And sure, I made more this year than I ever have in one year. (Though it sure doesn't feel that way -- damn you, rent!) But I still find it hard to believe that my Penn State stipend pushed me so far into a new bracket that my refund should plummet like it did.
And that's before I even got to the state returns. I first attempted to straighten out my tax situation over spring break, and found myself increasingly frustrated by my multi-state situation. The Federal return, unfair though I deemed it to be, still made sense and calculated the same refund every time I did it. No reason to believe I'd done anything wrong.
It was dealing with state taxes that totally threw me. First I tried claiming part-time residence in Pennsylvania. When they insisted that I absolutely must have some income from my farm, I abandoned that route. I read a little more carefully and realized, to my then-pleasure, that being a college student meant that I didn't have to claim residency while at school, so I could simply be a New Jersey resident (a fact that, tax complications aside, never ceases to make me smile). I presumed this would make things much easier.
Au contraire, mon frere! Because now we're entering the world of the nonresident return, which is fairly complicated when you consider that relatively equal parts of my income this year came from New Jersey sources (two W-2s from NJ employers) and from Penn State (one additional W-2). That, and apparently Pennsylvania and New Jersey have a reciprocal tax agreement with each other, so that income earned in one state while a resident of the other isn't subject to double-taxing. How convenient!
But navigating the waters of how to apply this agreement, and how to qualify which sources of income should be taxed by which state is, for lack of a better term, taxing -- not only to me, but to my illustrious tax-prep software. I came up with several very different scenarios while at home: one had me owe New Jersey $95, one had me owe them $0, one gave me a refund of $118! And this didn't even include my attempts at a Pennsylvania nonresident return quite yet, as I wasn't sure it was necessary.
As soon as TurboTax came to the MacBook (and, subsequently, back to State College), the solution was cleared up: yes, I need a Pennsylvania return. And despite my work at home assuring me that I would owe no Pennsylvania taxes, no sooner did I crunch the numbers than I owed Pennsylvania a staggering $283, on top of the $95 I owed New Jersey.
This, I deduced, was fucked up. That was more than my Federal refund, and thusly, it made no sense at all.
The end result of all this rigmarole was that I claimed (I believe properly) that all my income is to be taxed by New Jersey, so none of my New Jersey-earned income is subject to PA taxes, nor is my stipend subject to PA taxes (the W-2 says so). So I owe Pennsylvania nothing, and I still owe New Jersey $95 -- which, still, makes no sense to me. But at this point, I've decided that I can't put this off anymore and that maybe, if there's a just and loving god somewhere, the State of New Jersey may somehow realize that I'm a poor, hard-working kid who's gotten screwed by the tax system, and maybe I'll get a surprise refund after the fact.
Yeah, and maybe the Cubs will win a World Series sometime this century. I'll believe both when I see them. (Caveat: Sorry, Mary.)
All of this has me thinking, however, why April, wondrous month of springtime renewal and amusement park re-openings and glorious, glorious baseball that it is, should feature so many unfortunate days. (Remember April Fool's Day?) Hell, even last year, when the dreaded thesis bore down on me, I didn't quite have this sense of emptiness and ennui as I do this time around. Why should that be?
I posited this question to my friend Alicia, who, even in comparison to me and my frustrations, has been having an abysmal last few days. She's been sick, stressed out with too much work and too little time to do it (I'll be there soon, too; it just hasn't hit me yet), and this morning ran into a little car trouble that, after a quick diagnostic check at the local repair shop, quickly morphed into a lot of car trouble. She gets the whole April malaise just as badly as I do, if not worse. I listened patiently to the tale of her plights, offering what little useless advice I could, then accepted her invitation to share my own.
Upon hearing of my tax struggles, she reminded me of one crucial point I'd forgotten: her father is an accountant.
And, naturally, since every accountant on Earth is pulling their hair out today, she could offer little more than, "I'd have you call my dad, but it's, you know, April 15. Live and learn, eh?"
At least now I know for next year.
posted by Dave at 4/15/2008 04:29:00 PM
2 Comments:
thats exactly why i pay someone else to do it. the marginal sum spent is worth the lack of a headache.
-jf
Sounds like my taxes from last year, when I had two NJ W-2s and one from California. (No one has fun with game show money come tax time.) However, it is the least of my worries this April, unfortunately.
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