I’ve just completed our 2019 taxes. I use an online service called TaxAct to create the returns and file them electronically. It cost $72 for the federal and state filings this year. Then I did the local taxes myself on their website. Those are easy because there are no credits or deductions. I used to do our taxes manually because I didn’t trust a forms-based wizard to care as much about my numbers as me, but after TaxAct found deductions/credits that I didn’t know about resulting in hundreds of dollars for us the first time I used it, I was hooked. It also stores all our data – personal and employment – so it’s defaulted for the next year’s tax form. That saves time and reduces the risk for inaccuracy for sure.

For several years now I’ve been running a couple of calculations after the income tax forms are submitted to see how much those taxes impact our finances. I calculate our real tax rate – the actual percentage of our gross income that went toward income taxes instead of the LB household. This year our total income tax burden – federal + state +local – was 10.9% of our gross income. Last year it was 11.2% so I did improve on reducing our tax liability because our income was slightly higher this year. The best we’ve ever done was in 2015 when it was only 8.1%, and it’s impressive because that was a time when our income was lower. But the boys were younger so we probably had more exemptions and credits. I may have been maxing the 401k then too. I couldn’t keep that up once I had to begin cash-flowing some college expenses.

Another way I look at it is to calculate the percentage based on net worth instead of gross income. My thinking is that if the annual income tax burden became a fraction of a percentage point of net worth, it would be insignificant. So in 2015 – our best year for reducing taxes – our total tax burden was 2.2% of our net worth at that time. In 2018, it was 2.1%. Now, for 2019, it’s 1.8%. That’s our best result yet for the ‘how much does it hurt us’ evaluation.

Next year may be a doozy for taxes as we’ll lose the child tax credit x2 since the twins turn 17 this year. And DS2 will no longer be a dependent. I’ll need to change withholding to prevent owing money but that will wait for another time, maybe in the summer.