(Americans) Have you filed your tax returns yet?

[sweetwater]

We were burned hugely one year, so I am always very nervous that the Big Bill from U. Sam will show up again. Hasn't happened - indeed, I'm usually surprised by the amount of our refunds. It's difficult to estimate because we move from state to state so that complicates things. This year we are getting a very large refund. Who wants to be my friend now? :p

[glatt]

Originally Posted by sweetwater

We were burned hugely one year

They raped us the year we got married. I had always looked at the charts up until then and saw that married people paid less in tax, but it didn't occur to me that I was only looking at the line for my single income, and that when we got married we had to add our incomes together and read the line in that part of the table. It bumped us up into a higher tax bracket, and even though we dutifully reported our filing status change to our employers, we got married late in the year, and those couple of months weren't enough to withhold what we owed.

It wasn't until we bought a house and had two kids that the federal taxes went way way way down.