I wondered if I should make the thread this year, because Cowutopia or someone yelled at me for making it "too early" last year. Thanks Yoshi.
re: W4s and withholding; in general, as long as you have made estimated payments equal to 100% of your tax liability from the prior year, you're not going to be penalized. So one way to go about paying as little to the Federal Government as possible would be to make one big 1040 ES payment this quarter equal to whatever your amount is on your 2009 1040 Line 60.
I'm back at a tax prep place this year (since I've been unemployed since June) and I'm ready to go on a murdering spree by the end of every day. Most of the banks through which those RALs were offered (refund anticipation loans) have stopped giving them out or have changed the qualification rules, so everyone is psychotic this year just to find a place that gives them the $5000+ of EIC that they didn't earn as soon as possible. I've already had some organization like the BBB called specifically on me because I was unable to fully account for where a person's refund check was at. The Big Tax Year 2009 Lesson everyone is learning is that unemployment benefits are not EARNED INCOME, so that means if all you did was sit on your ass and suck the Fed's tit for the year, your tax return is going to be a mere fraction of what it was years before. Yes, even if you had taxes withheld from the payments. I can't tell you how many times I've sat through preparing a return from some mid-20's single mom who is filing her 3 kids, all four of them with no common last name between them, then have to take 15 minutes to explain why their return sucks because the only form she brought in is a god damned 1099G. People are getting laid off or otherwise asking for early withdrawals from pensions or other qualified plans and are flabbergasted that they are liable for a 10% excise tax on those payouts. A new credit created for this year is called the Making Work Pay credit which is entered onto a new form (1040 Schedule M), which basically gives everyone $400 for free unless they already received a so called $250 "economic recovery payment" in 2009, and nobody coming into the store has any idea what that means, so that basically means a good 25% more of the returns that we do are rejected because of Schedule M conflicts (for which we then have to explain why their return is going to be $250 less than the amount which is stated on their original paperwork).
By the way, I didn't suck my own cock about it before because I don't think anyone would really care otherwise, but since it's topical here - a while ago I finished a project I was working on for two years and it's been done, so believe me when I say I should be able to answer almost any tax question you may have because I have read and rewritten the United States Tax Code.
http://www.onelinetaxcode.com
No joke.
ps: For 09 I altered my W4 statement and had my wife do the same, so we may be owing a little this time. When I said that, she sorta pouted and said "But I want a check!", to which I replied, "Yeah, but you're not stupid".
