I-bonds from tax refund

[yankees60]

Hey Vinny,

I feel your pain on this. That tax software can be quite a challenge if you want to do something that isn't what the programmers expected.

I know it's too late for you this year, but just to give you an alternate data point, I use turbotax and have bought savings bonds with my refund without a hitch for the last several years. But, I understand that the choice of how to do one's taxes goes way beyond ease of savings bond purchases!

Good luck!

Thanks. I am losing count but I think I've failed now at least four times (if not five) trying some different things on some of those tries.

At some point I will explain why Intuit / TurboTax angered me so much that I turned to H&R Block.

My backup to all of this is that I have someone who lives a mile down the street from me willing to print the returns and then post office is only half mile from his house. So not desirable but not the worst thing either. And, I will be able to get my $5,000 iBond purchase by filing a paper return.

[Xan]

I'll just make my annual plug for Free File Fillable Forms here. It's just like the paper forms except it does most of the math for you and you file electronically. But you're working directly with the real forms, instead of somebody else's layer of forms/questions layered on top of the real forms.

[yankees60]

I'll just make my annual plug for Free File Fillable Forms here. It's just like the paper forms except it does most of the math for you and you file electronically. But you're working directly with the real forms, instead of somebody else's layer of forms/questions layered on top of the real forms.

Does Texas have state income taxes?

Capture.JPG (18.81 KiB) Viewed 11053 times

[coasting]

Does Texas have state income taxes?

Hell no!!!

But we make up for it in property taxes.

[Xan]

I'll just make my annual plug for Free File Fillable Forms here. It's just like the paper forms except it does most of the math for you and you file electronically. But you're working directly with the real forms, instead of somebody else's layer of forms/questions layered on top of the real forms.

Does Texas have state income taxes?

Capture.JPG

I'm not sure where that screencap came from. The right place is:
https://www.freefilefillableforms.com/
State taxes are not supported at all.

[yankees60]

I'll just make my annual plug for Free File Fillable Forms here. It's just like the paper forms except it does most of the math for you and you file electronically. But you're working directly with the real forms, instead of somebody else's layer of forms/questions layered on top of the real forms.

Does Texas have state income taxes?

Capture.JPG

I'm not sure where that screencap came from. The right place is:
https://www.freefilefillableforms.com/
State taxes are not supported at all.

It came from me doing a search on Free File Filllable Forms and it bringing me to the above at Tax Act.

State taxes not being supported at all would not be workable.

This morning I did get my tax returns printed and in the mail. So that ordeal (in many ways) is over.

[boglerdude]

Vinny doing things at the last minute? Not sure I'm ok with that.

[yankees60]

Vinny doing things at the last minute? Not sure I'm ok with that.

I got caught up in putting another business's extensive needs ahead of my own. Plus my own rather low income return had so many issues in it that I had to resolve which way too many hours to find the answers. I don't do anything on my tax return unless I can find solid rules for doing so. I keep a parallel Excel worksheets to my H&R Block tax return and put all the documentation in those worksheets.

Here is just one of them.

I had two schedule C businesses. One with a profit and the other with a loss.

I have a Solo 401(k). For the profit sharing calculation do you net them? Do you just do it on the profit? How about the self-employment taxes included in that calculation? Do you use the real one on your tax return or a theoretical one you would have had on just the profit business?

I looked all over the internet for an answer to that and could not find anything really addressing. Finally this morning I received this email from someone who gave me quotes from his book:

"There is ambiguity in the rules. Here’s what I’ve written in Who’s the Employer:


The regulations do not discuss losses from self-employment as they relate to earned income and compensation. It is the author’s view that in the typical situation earned income is based on earnings from self-employment and without regard to losses in other businesses. Unofficial responses of IRS National Office officials at the 2005 ASPPA Annual Conference indicated that they concurred at the time."

No wonder I was unable to find anything definitive!

[yankees60]

SUCCESS!

A few weeks ago I did receive my $5,000 iBonds in the mail after having requested them via my 2022 tax return / refund!

I am now officially 2-4 in attempting to do this. Excellent batting average but terrible fielding average!

I started with the 2019 return and seem to fail on the odds years and succeed on the even years returns.

One curious item (and interested in others experiences with this) ... without checking from the 2020 return I seem to remember getting the $5,000 in these denominations:

$1,000 - 4
$500 - 1
$100 - 5

I think this time all I received was one $5,000 bond, which is preferable.

[barrett]

SUCCESS!

A few weeks ago I did receive my $5,000 iBonds in the mail after having requested them via my 2022 tax return / refund!

I am now officially 2-4 in attempting to do this. Excellent batting average but terrible fielding average!

I started with the 2019 return and seem to fail on the odds years and succeed on the even years returns.

One curious item (and interested in others experiences with this) ... without checking from the 2020 return I seem to remember getting the $5,000 in these denominations:

$1,000 - 4
$500 - 1
$100 - 5

I think this time all I received was one $5,000 bond, which is preferable.

Vinny,

I'm guessing you filed your return by the April deadline and am curious when these paper bonds are dated. Did you get April-dated bonds that have the .4% fixed rate and a couple extra months of interest, or did you get the .9% fixed rate that went into effect on May 1st?

[yankees60]

SUCCESS!

A few weeks ago I did receive my $5,000 iBonds in the mail after having requested them via my 2022 tax return / refund!

I am now officially 2-4 in attempting to do this. Excellent batting average but terrible fielding average!

I started with the 2019 return and seem to fail on the odds years and succeed on the even years returns.

One curious item (and interested in others experiences with this) ... without checking from the 2020 return I seem to remember getting the $5,000 in these denominations:

$1,000 - 4
$500 - 1
$100 - 5

I think this time all I received was one $5,000 bond, which is preferable.

Vinny,

I'm guessing you filed your return by the April deadline and am curious when these paper bonds are dated. Did you get April-dated bonds that have the .4% fixed rate and a couple extra months of interest, or did you get the .9% fixed rate that went into effect on May 1st?

Many, many, many thanks for asking that question!

I had thought for certain I knew where I'd last placed that envelope but it was not there. The two years ago envelope of IBonds was there but not this one. That caused me to go through all the papers that had accumulated in the last few months and to get them all organized prior to be filed in folders. Not there. I went through everything in my paper recycle bag. Not there. Finally I went through all the file folders in reverse, starting from Z. There it was as the first item in the "B" folder, presumably for bonds. Normally I do a bulk filing but, I guess, I decided that a $5,000 bond should get filed on its own prior to the mass filing. So thanks for prompting me to get all that work done that had to be done at some time (except for inspecting every item in my paper recycle bag!).

Also, thanks also for asking the question which got me for the first time to look at the dates on all the bonds.

Now to finally answer your question.

The bonds I received two years ago are all dated 9/30/21. I did a 5/15/21 paper filing of that 2020 return.

This year I did a 4/18/23 filing of the 2022 return.

The $5,000 bond is dated 6/5/23.

By the way $5,000 two years ago were:

$1,000 - 4,
$500 - 1
$200 - 1
$50 - 6

Anyone know why they came in that form rather than just one $5,000?

[barrett]

By the way $5,000 two years ago were:

$1,000 - 4,
$500 - 1
$200 - 1
$50 - 6

Anyone know why they came in that form rather than just one $5,000?

Thanks for the info on the issue dates, Vinny. So it's obviously not from the date you file your return but rather when the Treasury gets around to issuing the I-bonds. In this case you "lost" a couple months of interest but got the better fixed yield, so definitely better as a long-term holding.

Regarding the odd amounts of your bonds from two years ago, people post about that all the time on Bogleheads and no one seems to have an decent explanation.

[yankees60]

It seems that the experience several of us have had is not an unusual one:

From here:

https://www.whitecoatinvestor.com/i-bonds-and-tips/

"Finally, you can actually buy another $5,000 per year of I Bonds with your tax refund. Be aware that the IRS screws this up a lot."