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Taxes

February 2nd, 2017 at 01:29 pm

I filed my federal and state taxes yesterday. I have to pay $250 to federal and $199 to state. I knew that the self-employment tax would get me, and this is not too bad. I scheduled withdrawals from the bank for the day after my next payday. I also paid $60 to TaxAct.

No other spending yesterday, but that's enough, isn't it?

I'm always glad to have these big bumps in my budget over with. Since next month's budget will be hijacked by my tax payment, I will do the tune-up on my car the following month. And I also have another getaway coming up, though the dates are not set yet.

Got up this morning realizing that I had no plan for packing my lunch. I did put together something, though -- soup from the freezer, celery sticks with cream cheese and peanut butter, crackers, and a clementine.

Tomorrow I'm heading to Indiana straight from work to spend a couple of days with BFF. I'm going to take my laundry, and therefore won't pack anything but toiletries and underwear. I really have to clean the fish tank tonight, because it's overdue, and shouldn't stew for a couple more days.

I'm going to have lunch with K tomorrow, a Greek restaurant that she recommends, within walking distance of the museum.

Now that I have a 1040 showing a much lower income in 2016 than 2015, I need to take it to the RTA and get a new card for riding the trains. I believe my income is now low enough to be entitled to free transport. Just need to figure out how to do that.

I got a call to work at an upcoming election in my city. I am not going to call back. I make more money at work than I would at the election, and since it wasn't fun last time, I doubt it would be this time.

7 Responses to “Taxes”

  1. snafu Says:
    1486045605

    If you meet the criteria of 'self employed,' I hope you were able to take all the appropriate deductions like a percentage of square footage, pro rated for mortgage, condo fees, taxes, heat, electric, internet, any office supplies you use and a slice of computer cost. Since you go to the museum, you are entitled to a representative amount for transportation, like $ .075 per mile or whatever the going rate in your city.

  2. CB in the City Says:
    1486046889

    I took the deduction for mileage. I don't do any of the work at home, so I'm not entitled to the other stuff, including office supplies which are provided.

  3. fern Says:
    1486066181

    As you might remember, I decided not to work the polls on election day here too, becus it was a very long day, from about 5:30 am to 9 pm, you couldn't heat up your lunch or go out for food, etc.

    But I'm curious how your experience was. Similar reasons, or different?

  4. fern Says:
    1486066367

    And if you take the home office deduction, the workspace, computer, etc all have to be dedicated to your self-employment; if you use it for personal use, then i don't think you get a full deduction. But you reminded me that with any contract jobs that dont pay a W2 I should remember to track mileage and claim that. I'm not sure if I've had that experience yet, as jobs I've driven to generally paid me a regular paycheck with various deductions. I believe the mileage deduction is set by federal govt

  5. CB in the City Says:
    1486071697

    My experience was not good. I had to devote several hours the day before to setup (because we're electronic in Illinois) as well as a whole evening to training, so it was even more than one long day, but just one paycheck just the same. Some of the people I worked with were pretty rude to me; they were old-timers who were very impatient with the questions and mistakes of a newbie. However, there was no problem with food -- there was a full kitchen on site, and leaving for lunch was not frowned upon (though I did not do it). In fact, we even got free pizza and donuts from party volunteers.

  6. fern Says:
    1486073609

    Interesting...my voting location, where i worked, was in the middle school gym, so that's why we had no kitchen facilities there. The registrars did bring in some free food. We had a mandatory meeting before hand of about an hour.

  7. FrugalTexan75 Says:
    1486088826

    I hope you're able to get the free transportation.

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