UPDATE: [02/05/25] This time it took a week for the Federal Refund deposit to the bank account. That’s not the record, but pretty quick nonetheless.
UPDATE: [01/29/25] Both State and Federal have been submitted and accepted. The clock is now ticking to see how soon the Federal Refund will be posted to the bank account. The record is three days.
We have had the 2024 tax program installed since last November, and have been inputting information since then, but today is the first time that we have run through all the preliminary data prior to getting the last of the IRS 1099 forms from our various Government and financial institutions.
I have put together a spreadsheet for each tax year which does many of the major calculations for the tax year with educated guesses and actual numbers. The form has several functions including a calculator for our Required Minimum Distribution (RMD) from the retirement savings. That particular function, each year, establishes the RMD as soon as I input the year end savings balance and the age factors, which are used to calculate the actual RMD amount. That way, I can set up the periodic withdrawals to be made for the year which usually amount to within pennies of the required amount. We’ve already received the January withdrawal.
As I have said in earlier posts about this topic, I like to set things up such that the amount in the refund or amount owed are a small value. I don’t like loaning the government interest-free money. This year, it appears, we will be getting a refund a little further away from zero than we would prefer. We did the withholding based on the expected standard deduction and our effective tax rate from last year, but the IRS increased the standard deduction figure which displaced us a bit from the target we set. Oh well, we will do the usual and place the refund in long-term savings investment.
So, now all we have to do is wait for the last of the expected 1099s to become available on or about the 29th of this month (January), and run the missing numbers for which approximations have been used thus far. Then, we will e-file the returns at the end of January or the beginning of February.
Well, it’s all over but the reimbursement as far as the 2023 Tax Season is concerned. We obtained (electronically) all the necessary financial reports and have concluded the preparation of our submissions to the collective thievery of the US Internal Revenue Service and the Arizona State Department of Revenue (ADOR).
I usually start setting up for the next years’ financial considerations in late November which was the case this past (2023) November. I have a spreadsheet that I have developed (and continue to develop as things are dynamic to an extent) which allows me to do several things to manage our money:
The current tax season will soon be over for us since we are completely done with everything except for one consolidated 1099 form from our brokerage; this investment account is always last for some reason, but it has previously been in our (electronic) possession before January is over. We’re expecting it to be available next week. We get a handful of 1099s from several sources including IRA RMD, SSA, pensions and financial institutions. Everything is already input to this year’s tax program except for the one mentioned above.
When the IRS changed the standard deduction under President Trump to be greater than our usual itemized deductions, it made our return so much easier to manage, given our financial particulars. We almost used to be like the dude in the photo on the left, but now we’re relieved of all that tedium under the revised standard deduction. We were happy to see that the current administration left things intact (albeit futzing around with other IRS functions). After we receive that last 1099 form, we will then be just a few clicks away from filing. This year, we are happy to say, that we analyzed our tax situation early and managed our withholding such that we will be receiving a small refund (<1K) from the Feds and, because of our charitable support for Arizona Private Education, we will be paying no state income tax at all.