this post was submitted on 23 Feb 2025
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Income tax always struck me as a deliberate way to make your average joe hate taxes when they could, very easily, be calculated at time of payroll without you ever being shown the “pre tax” amount.
I don't care about seeing the amount or not. I care that I have to deliberately set up my withholdings incorrectly to hopefully not end up owing too much more at the end of the year. If I set it up accurately I would end up owing thousands more.
That's because Republican "tax cuts" are often just a change in the withholding rate.
I'm not sure how withholdings works for your paycheque, but you request where the number is set.
You define what's accurate for a percentage when you set it.
Actually you define the number of deductions to with hold. The more deductions you claim, the less they take out.
Yeah, it's a shit show over here. You kinda guess at how much you will need to pay in taxes, hold back that amount in your paycheck, and hope for the best. And if your life situation changes or the incoming government fucks around with the tax codes, your estimating will be off. Getting it down to a very small refund is the optional solution, but it's not always as easy as you'd think.
That's kinda what quarterly estimated taxes are for. At the end of every quarter, if things aren't lining up and your estimates were too low, you can pay extra tax to bring things in line.
The estimate doesn't have to be too precise though. At long as you pay at least 90% of what you owe this year or 100% of what you owed last year (whichever is smaller), you'll be fine. Any less than that and you'll be hit with an underpayment penalty.
It's better to owe money rather than get a refund, as long as you pay enough to avoid the underpayment penalty.
I get that it's ideal to owe, but I would rather a refund of a couple hundred dollars than owe a couple thousand. Part of the issue is inconsistent income, though. If it was just a single flat salary for the entire year that should be simple, but when you add in variable pay rates and shift differentials and shift bonuses it all gets messed up.
I totally understand. I hate owing a lot too, but sometimes I get the estimations wrong. I've got a fixed yearly salary, but a big portion of my pay is stock (RSUs) so the tax I owe varies based on when I sell the stock.
A lot of things suck, but setting up your withholding is easy, and in 30 years of paying taxes, I've never accidentally withheld too little.
I hadn't. I've also withheld to much and got a warning letter from the IRS. It's at a point now where things have been optional for the last few years. But with the new tax changes Trump is bringing in, I expect I'll go from getting a small refund to owing a bit next year.
They already do that tho, payroll tax is paid by the employer without the employee every seeing it.