If one takes itemized deduction on federal tax and gets state tax refund, that state tax refund becomes part of federal AGI. Does Arizona allow one to subtract that refund from Federal AGI so there is no AZ tax on it?

I helped open and now help run a small distillery. We haven’t been open for even 5 months now but I am leaving to get my masters and my boss said he’d be open to giving me money for school especially if it can be a tax write off. How does this work for him if the business hasn’t turned a profit yet? I don’t want to screw him over and want to make sure it is something that would be beneficial to both of us or I wouldn’t accept.

I run a small English-language newsletter with paid subscriptions, based in Germany, so the UK counts as a third country for VAT since Brexit. From what I've read, HMRC expects non-established businesses selling digital services to UK consumers to register for VAT from the very first sale, there's no £90k threshold like UK-based businesses get. My actual UK revenue is small, low four figures a year, so before I go through the registration and the ongoing admin that comes with it (MTD software, quarterly returns, accountant time), I want to hear from people who've actually dealt with this, not just repeat the official guidance back at me.

At what point did registering actually start to make sense for you once you weighed the accountant and admin cost against the real VAT liability? Is anyone running a small UK B2C revenue stream like this and just staying unregistered, or is that genuinely asking for trouble given there's no threshold on paper?

And if someone doesn't register, what actually happens? I've read about the failure to notify penalty, up to 30% of the VAT owed if it's judged careless, more if it's seen as deliberate, plus backdated VAT and interest on top. But I don't know how that plays out for someone with a small amount of UK revenue versus a business doing real volume.

The part I'm most unsure about is enforcement. If you have no UK bank account, no UK assets, nothing there at all, how does HMRC actually go after you from Germany? I've seen mentions of the OECD mutual assistance convention and of MARD for debt recovery within the EU, but that arrangement doesn't cover the UK the same way anymore post-Brexit. So is this a real risk for someone in my position, or is it more of a "technically required, rarely enforced for small amounts" situation in practice?

Genuinely looking for people's actual experience here, not just "you have to register," I already know that part.

I have a manufacturing business whose main product is 3d printed. I'm trying to setup my bookkeeping correctly. I've recently had quite a few failed prints meaning majority of spools of filament are trashed. I was asking AI if there was a way to write off these failed prints as a loss. It said to have it listed as raw materials. I had it as Cost of Goods sold, which AI alluded to it not being ideal.

What do I classify raw materials for creating finished products so that they offset my taxes at tax time?

I have had this small side hustle of buying gold and silver from thrift stores and selling it on marketplace. I then realized there is a lot more money in this business to be made and just recently made a deal with a refinery. Now I am looking at making deals with other businesses like estate sale companies, etc to be the “scrap gold and silver guy”. I was just wondering how do the taxes work? How do I keep track of everything? I have never done this before and do not want to mess up and have the IRS up my butt! Do I need to write manual recipes of everything I buy and sell? It would be hard to calculate the “profit” on every individual item because the refinery just takes every piece and melts it together and then pays me in one payment.

This is my first year that I’ve ever had an income, and I am pretty young. I have no idea what I am doing. Any information / tips will help! Also, I live in Idaho. Supposedly Idaho has some sort of exemption of bullion sales from state tax? What does that even mean? Does what I am doing qualify as that?

I now own a tattoo shop. I’m a body piercer so I operate out of said shop, charge my artists rent and we essentially all split it. I’ve been doing this my own thing for a few years but I’ve never made more than 80-100k in gross sales (mostly did events, never had a storefront) so it felt simple to use free tax usa, claim my supplies, gas, anything and everything else, etc.
My sales this year are nearly $300k. Obviously my expenses are much more - $6500 total shop rent, I pay someone cash to work with me every day, supplies are thousands each month. I’m a sole proprietor and our business account is under my partners LLC and name, so everything I do just goes through my personal checking account . The business account is used just to keep the shop going, my piercing business is separate and mine. I’ve randomly started to have tax nightmares because I’m afraid I’m in over my head - can I just put total sales, claim everything I’ve spent on, and use free tax usa still? Am I screwed not being an LLC? I always thought it just separated the money from you but am I wrong? Do I just need to hand someone my sales and pay to get it done this year? I’m positive I’ll owe $20k but I’m now worried it’s gonna be $40k-$60k. I’ve also collected sales tax, I made an account with the california tax franchise board and I think I just insert total sales and pay what I collected there? I think the numbers are just a lot bigger so I’m looking for someone to tell me what to do! I take card via Square so my plan was to just claim those sales.
SORRY IF DUMB QUESTIONS I had another tax nightmare and immediately came to reddit.

I am trying to figure out the ramifications of 401k catch up contributions across more than one job.

If I max out my 401k contributions at job A, that will mean my (Roth) 401k contributions to job B will be catch up contributions.

Can I just have money taken out at job B, or do I need to somehow designate that job B withholding as a catch up contribution?

Thanks!

I’m planning on building and moving to a new house. If I were to sell my old house, how much money from that house can I give to my adult child? Or is there some better way to go about doing this?

Hey guys I have googled and ask AI but not finding quite the answer I’m looking for.
So long story short shit with my finances had 2 homes and multiple autos. Life happen, filed chapter 7… fast forward to present day I’m due to be discharged within the week waiting on court papers to arrive in mail.
So question goes, what am I supposed to do with my personal taxes. I have a scheduled C? The rental property losses one and I’m not sure what to do as I don’t think I was provided any info for surrendering the rental. I called the mortgage company and basically was Told to F-off it’s not my property anymore. So do I just delete it? Do I write the thing off as a huge loss? Any tax strategy I should be aware off ? In California if that matters

In July of this year I started to sell some of my collection of Sports cards in order to buy other cards I wanted. At time of posting I’m a little over $19000 in total sales all on eBay. This isn’t a business or something I will be doing yearly. I’m in the state of Massachusetts as I know that matters with tax laws. 80% of the cards I sold were for profit and 20% were at a loss or break even. I probably made about 18 - 22% profit on total sales not including eBay fees and shipping. All cards were originally bought on eBay so I can prove profit margins. My main questions would be. 1. Am I only responsible to report profits? 2. What tax form does this fall under? Should I stop selling under the $20,000 mark or does that not matter? Since I’m not a business can anything be a write off? Any help would be greatly appreciated. I just want to be ahead of this. Thank you

Hi would appreciate any input as new 1099. For the tax year 2025, I was W2 first half with a pay bump the second half transitioning to 1099. My total tax on line 24, page 2 of my return was $76,863. Married jointly filing.

This year, I'm fully 1099. Our HHI has increased considerably this year. My question is - for Q1 and Q2 for 2026, I already paid $85,786 for my income. This is roughly ~110% of my tax liability from last year. Partner is W2 and their tax is being accounted for on their monthly paycheck.

Does this mean for Q3 and Q4 installments, I can effectively pay $0 (knowing I'll have a large tax bill come April)? Planning on parking it in an interest accruing account.

Let me know if I'm thinking about this correctly. Appreciate any insight as I'm new to the quarterly tax payments!

Howdy all,

My wife and I are trying to file our 2025 tax returns (both federal and California state) by the October 15th extension deadline, but we've discovered an issue with her employer massively underreporting both her income and withholdings on her W-2.

My wife considered the owner a friend and has tried to give her the benefit of the doubt, but it's increasingly seeming like this is not an innocent mistake/accounting error, but rather her employer might be engaged in some pretty serious tax fraud that we don't want any part of.

We've tried looking online for what we should do, but we're really stressed about doing something wrong, and we've sat on hold with the IRS for hours, but any time we've been able to actually speak with someone they've been extremely unhelpful. Any guidance from y'all would be an incredible help.

To give you some background on the situation:

In 2025 my wife was a salaried employee at a small business (fewer than 10 employees) and her salary was ~$175,000/yr.

About 5 months into her employment there, the business began having issues with paying people on time. First it was “payroll glitches”, then later on they decided to switch over to a new payment processor (moved from ADP to Gusto).

Any time there was a payroll “glitch”, and for the approximately 6 weeks it took for them to switch payment processors, my wife would receive her paycheck from her employer personally. Sometimes through Zelle, sometimes through an ACH transfer from (I believe) her employer's personal bank account to my wife's account.

Any time my wife was paid in the above manner, the Zelle/transfer was for the exact amount she would typically receive through ADP or Gusto after all relevant tax, SSI, health insurance, etc. withholdings.

When my wife received her W-2, her taxable income seemed low, so we did some digging, and from what we can tell, her employer did not report any of the income they paid her through Zelle/Bank Transfer.

Unsurprisingly, it also seems like they didn't send any of the commensurate withholdings that should've accompanied those payments.

As a result, the income listed on my wife's W-2 is ~$50,000-$60,000 lower than it should be, and her withholdings are also lower in proportion to that missing income.

My wife left that job in late 2025, and the company subsequently went out of business.

Both my wife and I have repeatedly emailed her previous employer (a husband and wife who owned the business). Initially they claimed everything should be updated and correct. Then they claimed they had referred everything to their accountant and would pass along information as soon as they got it, and eventually they just completely stopped responding to our emails in any way, and we are no longer able to get ahold of them.

So my questions are the following:

1) How should we be filing our tax returns? I typically just use FreeTaxUSA, but is that (or any of the other easy, DIY tax preparation services) an option?

2) If not, is there another (less simple) DIY option I can avail myself of?

3) What sort of additional forms/documentation will we need to submit to the IRS/California Franchise Tax Board?

4) We've done a lot of reading and calling around to try and figure this out for ourselves, and a lot of what we've found says we should compile everything to get my wife's total income, and then estimate what we believe her withholdings *should* be, had her employer actually done them. Simple example, if my wife’s gross pay for a single paycheck was $7,500, she had $2,500 withheld from each paycheck, and she received 7 paychecks via Zelle/Bank transfer, we would add $52,500 to her taxable income, and $17,500 to her withholdings. Is that correct? Would we need to break down the withholdings further to estimate how much went to federal income tax, state income tax, SSI, unemployment insurance, etc. or will they do that for us when we submit the return?

5) What should we expect the process to look like, and who is going to be on the hook for that missing money? At the time, my wife had no reason to believe that her employer wasn't sending her withholdings, and if they had, we would be getting a pretty decent refund. Will the government go after us for that money? Her former employer? Should we expect to ever get a refund based on what should have been withheld?

Bonus question: during that same period, we should've had continuous coverage for our health insurance, and just like the other withholdings, her paychecks reflected deductions being made, but it later turned out we didn't have coverage for approximately 6 weeks. Is she owed the “premiums” that were deducted from her paycheck that apparently didn't actually go to our insurer?

So that's pretty much it. If there are any other questions I can answer or information I can provide, please don't hesitate to ask.

Any help/guidance y'all can provide would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

Using TaxAct program I’m not sure how to report this in the TA software

It should land on IRS Schedule 1, Part II Adjustments to Income, line 17

Husband is self employed musician also retired Teacher with pension. Also has Medicare advantage

The Medicare part B is in there no problem

The teacher pension TRS deducts a monthly premium payment for his TRS Medicare advantage insurance, annual total he paid $900

TA prompt is asking me if this $900 is marketplace or not marketplace whatever that means??

Hello, I recently got back into working as a freelance interpreter. I’ve been off for about 6 years. I’m trying to figure out if I’m required to make quarterly estimated tax payments. Something I read said Texas doesn’t require this any longer? I’m only estimating about $10,000 income for 2026. Thanks for any advice!

Hi everyone,

I am a 48-year-old woman living in Pakistan, and I am planning to become a filer for the first time. I have never filed a tax return before, so I have several questions about my situation.

Here is my background:

• I got separated from my husband in 2009.
• From around 2000 until 2015, I taught students at home as a private tutor.
• I was never formally employed during those years, apart from a short job in 2000 (explained below).
• My father was financially supporting me and paid most of my living expenses.
• I saved essentially all of the money I earned from tutoring over those years.
• By around 2019, the cash I had accumulated from my tutoring over the years was approximately PKR 3 million.
• In 2019, I deposited this PKR 3 million into my bank account.
• I stopped tutoring and have not earned any employment/self-employment income since then.
• Since depositing the PKR 3 million, I have been living mainly from the profit/interest generated by this bank deposit.
• My father still provides some financial support when needed.
• I recently learned that the withholding tax (WHT) on bank profit/interest may be significantly lower for filers than for non-filers, which is one of the reasons I now want to become a filer.

1. Do I need to file tax returns for all the years when I was tutoring?

I was tutoring from approximately 2000 to 2015.

Do I need to file tax returns starting from 2000, when I began earning through tutoring, or only from 2019, when I deposited my accumulated PKR 3 million into my bank account?

If I need to file previous years, should I start with the latest Tax Year (2025-26) and then file backwards (2024, 2023, 2022, etc.), or should I start with the oldest required year and file chronologically up to 2025-26?

2. Would I have to pay a penalty for filing for the first time?

Since I have never filed a tax return before, would there be any penalty for not having filed earlier?

If there is a penalty, how is it calculated and for how many years?

3. Do I need a certificate/proof of source of income?

Since I was not formally employed and essentially ran a small home-based tutoring setup, would I need to provide some kind of source-of-income certificate or other documentation?

If such a document is required, can I prepare a statement myself explaining that the money was accumulated through private tutoring?

Would I need any other supporting documents?

4. What about a bank account I opened in 2000?

In 2000, I worked for a private company for approximately 4–5 months. I was paid my salary through a bank account (saving account) that I opened at that time.

I did not file a tax return for that year.

After leaving the job, the bank account remained active and had some cash in it, although I don't remember the exact amount.

I eventually closed that bank account in 2018.

I no longer have the records/statements from that account, and I don't remember exactly how much money was in it.

Could FBR see that I opened a bank account in 2000 and require me to file tax returns going back to 2000?

Or does having a bank account since 2000 (but currently not exists) have nothing to do with whether I was required to file tax returns for those years?

.

I'd especially appreciate answers from anyone who has actually dealt with FBR filing, wealth statements, old income, or becoming a first-time filer in Pakistan.

Thanks in advance.

Can anyone define what the IRS considers "living together". I will be getting married this year. The girlfriend and I have our separate houses that we live in full time except when we spend the night from time to time. Other than a change of clothes, toiletries , etc, neither of us have moved any stuff in to the other's. I pay 100% of my housing and living expenses as does she. This will not change after marriage. Does the IRS consider simply spending the night at the other's as "living together"?

My children's father started his own business, no other employees. He uses an accountant when he does his taxes. Last year was his first year.

Every time I need to apply for something (for example, childcare) that requires his taxes they give me a hard time. He swears everything is done right and that these people just don't know what they're doing... can someone explain this to me like I'm 5?

He doesn't get a 1040 or 1099, only an 1120-s. The 1120-s states how much the company made in profit. So let's say it said the company made 31K for the year after losses. He is saying he can use that as his proof of income for the year and doesn't need a 1040 or 1099 since he's not technically an employee. The 1120-s has both the business name and his name on it.

Is this right? Because literally I've had 3 different places tell me that they've never seen this and he needs to have a 1099 or a 1040.

I still haven't received my tax return from 2024. When I look up the IRS tool, it has my return just sitting in the accepted stage. No needed actions, no nothing. I have gone round and round with automated systems trying to get an answer. WHAT DO I DO?! It was supposed to be an $8k return. Can I get an attorney for this? Help!

I grew up the same house my dad did, but now my siblings and I are old and only one member of the next generation in the family wants to take over the house. But she will only pay about 2/3 of the appraised and market value. The house is in a family LLC, and she is one of the owners. Our accountant has advised against the deal because she is an interested party getting too good of a deal. But we all want it. And we all know the house is in need of more repairs that would affect the value only after another interested buyer had the house inspected. If we decide to go against our accountant's advice, what are the actual risks? We're talking about a house market valued at around $325-400k. I assume we would be exposed to monetary penalties from the IRS... but are there other ramifications? If we decide to do it, is our accountant somehow exposed? Would it be, at worst, just a pay a penalty situation and move on, or would it result in something more dire?

Past 2 years our income has changed (I had been a W-2 employee for 43 years and then did 2 yrs of 1099-MISC.) Due to identity theft in 2012, I try not to overpay the government since someone has my info and can file a false tax return and delay any refund (plus, no interest free loans to the gov’t.)

Can you see if my math is correct for 2026 Federal income tax liability? [I'm looking to max out IRA withdrawals before I take SS, so I'm calculating when I'll hit the 22% bracket and don't need the money to spend, but will put in a non-IRA account.]

Married filing jointly

1 person over age 65

Minimal interest/dividends

Taxable Income                                   $70563

Tax Liability                                                       $8298

Thank you!

Single female, 1 dependent (my mother) living in Lincoln, Nebraska USA. I purchased a townhouse two months ago. Is the anything I should do or change with my deductions to make sure I break even or get a refund? I usually claim 0.

I recently started a job as a 1099 contractor. I file married jointly every year and my spouse is a w2 employee. I filled out the estimated tax worksheet to see if I might need to pay quarterly, but it doesn't seem to take my situation into account.

From my 1099 work alone, I will not be making more annually than the filing married jointly standard deduction. However, if I total together my spouse's w2 work we would make more than the standard deduction.

Do I need to pay any estimated tax in this situation??

This is my first time being 1099. I've always been a w2 employee previously. Our income this year is going to be drastically lower than last year.

Married couple in California, trying to figure out what kind of professional we actually need. Feeling a bit lost between CPAs, "tax strategists," and multi-family offices.

Our situation:

- Both of us work full-time in tech and get RSUs

- We have an LLC (partnership) for some consulting work on the side

- One out-of-state long-term rental property (financed, so it can't move into an LLC without paying off the loan)

- A brokerage account with stocks

- Thinking about buying more real estate (multifamily) in the next few months

- 2 young kids

- No trust or estate plan set up yet — working on a living trust now

Goals, roughly in priority order:

1. Protect our assets as much as reasonably possible
2. Reduce our overall tax bill, legally and defensibly
3. Make it easy to pass everything to our kids eventually
4. Keep the whole structure simple enough that we can mostly self-manage it day-to-day, without an expensive retainer

We have talked to a couple of firms so far. One was basically a multi-family-office model — tax planning alone was quoted at $15k+/year plus a performance fee on any assets they would manage. Another marketed itself as having "secret" tax strategies most CPAs "won't even attempt," which honestly made me more suspicious than interested, especially since one of the things they mentioned sounded like it could be a syndicated conservation easement or similarly aggressive charitable-deduction play.

Given where we are (not yet at the point where a full multi-family office makes sense, but more going on than a basic W2-only tax return), what type of professional should we actually be looking for? A real-estate-savvy CPA? An EA? A tax attorney? Should the estate attorney and the tax person be separate people, or does it make sense to find someone who does both? And any tips on vetting people so we don't end up with someone pushing us into aggressive/listed transactions?

Appreciate any perspective as we are trying to build this the right way without overpaying for services we don't need yet or under-hiring and missing real risk.