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Once upon a time, people used to say that homeownership was a huge benefit come tax time.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n At this point, I\u2019ve been a homeowner almost longer in my life than I haven\u2019t.\u00a0 Hard to swallow that pill, but I did purchase my first home when I was 22 years old, and I\u2019ve been paying mortgage notes almost entirely since then, with only a small gap while I was in between homes in 2017.<\/span><\/p>\n However, the first home, I was splitting the mortgage 50\/50, so at the end of every tax season, it really didn\u2019t benefit either myself or Jen.\u00a0 We had talked about alternating years in which we would declare head of household and file 100% of the taxes on our respective returns, but it never came to fruition, and that was all at the tail end of our tenure.<\/span><\/p>\n It kind of helped when I was in my current digs, when mythical then-gf and I were living in sin and filing our own taxes as individual singles.\u00a0 It helped me from going straight negative, and I had maybe 2-3 years where I actually made a little bit of cash back, which was a massive win considering how many years previously in which I always seemed to owe money.<\/span><\/p>\n Once upon a time, people used to say that marriage was a huge benefit come tax time.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n I can\u2019t really speak much to this one, considering mythical now-wife and I have been married for closing in on year, this summer.\u00a0 I think in 2019 we still filed as individuals, since we were not-married for more of 2019 than we were.\u00a0 By the time we filed in 2020, the vast majority of the year was spent preparing for the birth of #1 and then navigating through the coronavirus-addled world, and I can\u2019t say that we really had a single tax return where we were a married, childless couple.<\/span><\/p>\n Once upon a time, people used to say that having kids was a huge benefit come tax time.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n Stories of degenerate baby mamas, entrapping dumbass men who can\u2019t be bothered to put a raincoat on, popping out and collecting children like they\u2019re Infinity Stones, and collecting come tax time.\u00a0 I\u2019ve known some women who perhaps weren\u2019t as degenerate, but they also weren\u2019t shy about expressing their anticipation for taxes, due to the supposed benefits and breaks they were always subject to based on the number of children they had.<\/span><\/p>\n In all fairness, contrary to the tone of this post, mythical wife and I actually did have an incredible 2020 tax return.\u00a0 The amount of money that was refunded to us, I had to wipe my eyes and run the numbers multiple times, because I was positive that there had to have been some sort of mistake.\u00a0 But it was legitimate, and for that one calendar year, we thought that all of the things people used to say was finally coming true, and by having the trifecta of a house, marriage and kids, tax returns were about to become a fucking holiday every year.<\/span><\/p>\n But coming back to reality here and to the present, I\u2019ve been a married homeowner with children for five years now, and over the span of the last two tax returns, I\u2019ve never owed so much money to the IRS in my life.\u00a0 Take 2020 and 2021\u2019s great and okay tax returns, and they\u2019ve been paid back with interest between 2022-2024.<\/span><\/p>\n I\u2019m not a CPA or even willing to find out what tax laws and policies are in place that have been systematically fucking my household since 2020, but all I know is that when I do my taxes, the fact that I\u2019m married, own a home, and having kids does absolutely nothing to my bottom line when it comes to filing taxes.\u00a0 And I mean that literally, when I get to the point in the tax software where I enter in information about my property and my kids, the number doesn\u2019t even flinch.\u00a0 Not a single dollar saved on account of the things that once upon a time, people used to say would help one\u2019s taxes.<\/span><\/p>\n I suppose marriage helps a little bit, because out of curiosity, I ran mythical wife\u2019s and I\u2019s numbers as individuals, and we would owed a noticeably higher debt, but like I said, my house, or my kids don\u2019t affect a single fucking cent in my return as a whole.<\/span><\/p>\n The one thing that I do know is that both mythical wife and I did technically switch our jobs in the 2022 year, and I vaguely remember when I was filling out all my initial paperwork, I didn\u2019t fill out a W-2 but a W-4 or whatever form has taken the place of the W-2.\u00a0 Somewhere in my allowances, myself or both mythical wife and I clearly checked something different from what we know, and both of us are not having nearly enough deducted from each paycheck, which is the primary killer for us.<\/span><\/p>\n I don\u2019t really know what I have to alter in order to stop getting raped by the IRS come tax time, so I just opted to just have a straight set amount withheld each paycheck, with the hopes that the cumulative math on my withholdings is closer or exceeds what I\u2019ve owed each of the last three years, with the hopes that when I run 2025 taxes in April in 2026, I won\u2019t get as obliterated as we\u2019ve been getting over the last few.<\/span><\/p>\n Because relying on marriage, homeownership and kids to bail us out in April is clearly fairy tales that started with once upon a time are clearly a dead thing of the past now.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Once upon a time, people used to say that homeownership was a huge benefit come tax time. At this point, I\u2019ve been a homeowner almost longer in my life than I haven\u2019t.\u00a0 Hard to swallow that pill, but I did purchase my first home when I was 22 years old, and I\u2019ve been paying mortgage … Continue reading Once upon a time, taxes edition<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[36,79,100,83,105,146],"class_list":["post-50543","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brog","tag-angst","tag-cashmoney","tag-comparison","tag-observations","tag-rage","tag-triggered"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50543","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=50543"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50543\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50545,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50543\/revisions\/50545"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=50543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=50543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=50543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}