Poll: Did you get a tax refund?

I got the check in the mail today and will be depositing into my account tomorrow!

me too!

You know you can do it via electronic deposit right? It processes your refund faster.

In previous years, I had it directly deposited. Unfortunately the accountant Xed out the spaces for the direct deposit. I filled out my routing and account numbers above the X's but I guess the IRS didn't register it, so hence it was mailed to me. Oh well.

technically i was supposed to get about $1100 back.  however, due to a growing student loan debt i've evaded for the past 6 years, the man took my refund & 15% of every pay until it's settled.  at first, i was kinda pissed.  then i realised that i brought this on myself & just need to work overtime until i can get other stuff paid up.

edit: the moral is... pay your student loans or remain unemployed to avoid garnishment   

Ask someone what they had to pay in income taxes this year.
If they answer with "None! I'm getting a refund!", then you have found your very own stupid person! Take care of them because they can't function well on their own.


Happy National Extortion Day. Have fun paying taxes most of you don't owe!

Canadians and others, um, have a nice April 15th!

Don't owe?

Howzzat?

The tax code, as written, does not tax the majority of income most people working and living within the 50 states.

The IRS disagrees.

Not to mention all the buffoons who go to prison every year because they figure they know of some tax-loophole that more well-funded (read: rich) taxpayers apparently missed.

Or Why Do I have to Pay Taxes?
debunks most of the common non-payment arguments.

Thanks, Jonathan. I knew there was a better link there somewhere, but I couldn't find it.

Okay, let's take this one at a time.

1. Article 1, Section 8 certainly does grant Congress the power to tax things *IT CONTROLS*. Look at the rest of the section. It specifically enumerates limited powers. Therefore, the taxing ability is confined to those things Congress has direct control over. This is known as federal jurisdiction.

2. The 16th Amendment did nothing to EXTEND the taxing power of congress, as the Supreme Court stated in Stanton vs Baltic Mining Co, 240 U.S. 103 (1916), "the provisions of the 16th Amendment conferred no new power of taxation". And the Treasury Department agreed in Treasury Decision 2303.

3. Technically true, but misleading. All individuals are indeed required to pay tax THEY LEGALLY OWE. This is why you have gross income and taxable income. Some income is not taxable.

4. Leaving aside the fact the Constitution does not say anywhere that Congress can give away any of its assigned duties, this is fine. The IRS is an agency to enforce the tax code. Therefore the tax code is the supreme arbitrator in terms of disputes about what is owed.

5. If one OWES the TAX, they must pay the tax. I have no problem with this, although it's written in a misleading manner.

6. No problem here, again, if you owe the tax, you must pay the tax.

7. Again, no problem. If you owe, you must pay.

8. Absolutely! But what about the IRS? Do they have the right to violate and disobey tax laws?

The rest of the "Commonly Used Frivolous Arguments" are true. Those arguments are patently and demonstrably false. The "861 Argument" is patently and demonstrably true, which is why they've left it out here. They can't refute it.

It's not some opinion, it's the actual LAW the way it is written by Congress and interpreted and implemented by the IRS.

1) What part of "The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes" don't you get? By your argument, since the Clause 5 says that the Congress has the power to coin money and regulate the value thereof, they have the power to tax monetary exchanges. And don't give me some semantic bullshit about what "coin" means.

2) Yes, the point being that they ALREADY had that power. You ommitted the rest of the sentence "but simply prohibited the previous complete and plenary power of income taxation possessed by Congress from the beginning from being taken out of the category of indirect taxation to which it inherently belonged�

BTW - the IRS gives you 10% of the money collected when you report a tax cheat. Anyone have Starfox's contact info? ;)

Mmhmm...and what evidence if any do you have that I don't pay my taxes? The IRS also fines people who give them false or fraudulent information. :)

1) Then explain this bit from the 1956 regulations which were not fundamentally changed (i.e. there were NO changes to the United States Code) in 1983 (the most current version of the overall tax code)

"No other items may be excluded from gross income except (a) those items of income which are, under the Constitution, not taxable by the Federal Government; (b) those items of income which are exempt from tax on income under the provisions of any act of Congress still in effect..." 26 CFR 39.22(b)-1 (1956)

So, if the taxing clause of the Constitution were all encompassing as you seem to suggest, why was this in the regulations? What types of income would be "under the Constitution, not taxable by the Federal Government"?

2) Exactly, we agree. The 16th Amendment did not extend any new taxing power to Congress. Therefore we agree that the 16th Amendment did not create and cannot be the legal basis for the income tax (other than moving it from indirect taxation to direct taxation).

Check out http://www.861.info and then see if you agree with the IRS. Note: You will need broadband for the above link, and it's somewhat long (30 min or so).

Sorry, but the IRS is just protecting their extortion racket. It's not a loophole, it's the way the law is written.

None of the above, i work, but paid no taxes. yay for exemptness, of course, my total in come was under $1000, but hey,considering i've only been working since November and with no bills to pay, i'm happy.

Canadians pay taxes too!

and i'd have to look into it, but im pretty sure other countries to do :P

oh wait? I hadn't thought of that one. Don't tempt me... ;-p

As a lot of you already know, I owed. I owed $18,630, to be precise. Yeah, not my favorite tax year, to be sure. :)

We weren't in nearly as awful a spot as you, but we did owe well over $2000. It still hurt. Lots.

*nods* quite understandably. It especially hurts when you aren't expecting it.

The federal government sent me some money, the state of ohio sent me some money, but since i work in a township, i dont pay city taxes out of my paycheck.

so i owe the city of bowling green about $100, and the city of toledo about $300.

bleh!

Yeah, I got a refund. In February. Which is when I did my taxes. Lazybones.

amen!

i'm canadian, and yes i got a refund.

yay! i filed electronically a while ago. now i'm just waiting for it to be deposited.

We got a refund this year, but this coming year's going to be a big pain in the ass because of the business. For various reasons, I don't need to pay estimated tax this year, but I also don't withhold taxes from business income. That'll add up to one hell of a tax bill next April. I'll enjoy the puny refund while it lasts. :)

Oh, and if you're getting a refund, you're withholding too much. Stop giving the govenment an interest-free loan.

Oh, and if you're getting a refund, you're withholding too much. Stop giving the govenment an interest-free loan.

While I agree with that, I rather enjoy the lump disbursement of my money in April.� Which is better, trickling it away throughout the year or getting a mass payment... like a Christmas Club account, only later.

I've had a massive tax bill in the past.� $3000 may not be massive compared to some, but it's more than I had at the time.� When the next year rolled around I still owed $1200.� I had changed my witholdings and received $1500 back.� When I tried to use that to pay off the remaining debt, they told me that it was settled before they cut the check.� I didn't miss that $25/week,�and collecting a $3000 check would have been nice.�

What we really need to do is remove the 'interest free' part of it.� The IRS charges penalties and interest... it's only fair that we should collect them.� But wait, I just used a government agency and 'fair' in the same sentence. :-)

> While I agree with that, I rather enjoy the lump disbursement of my money in April.
> Which is better, trickling it away throughout the year or getting a mass payment...
> like a Christmas Club account, only later.

So start a brokerage account and have your employer fund it automatically from your paycheck every month and stick it in something safe. Then on April 15th, if you're so inclined, change it all out and take home more than you'd take if you'd let the IRS earn interest instead.

i got a $28 refund on my federal taxes, but i owed $97 to illinois.

i can't wait til i can sit down to do my taxes without having to worry about w-2s for multiple jobs, or unemployment insurance, or taxes for two different states...bah.

I don't owe, but I didn't get anything back, and I worked.

first off, i'm a canadian if it's not immediately obvious (what, i figure it's tattooed across my face, eh?) so this is all about canadian taxes

i didn't receive a tax package this year, which is kind of bizarre to say the least. it wasn't a big deal, it's pretty easy to print the tax forms off online, it just meant i was missing my pre-assigned access codes for online / over-the-phone filing of my taxes. so after some humming and hawing and paper-filling i decided to call and find out what was up.

basically they claimed that they never received anything for my previous years income tax. wtf? i said, i received a big refund last year. nope, they said, you're a big fat liar. i got them to check... twice... no tax filing

ok, no big deal, back online and with a little wandering i find that they have tax forms back at least seven years so i print off the years previous tax forms. can't file online or by phone, so i need actual receipts for everything. this is where i find that i'm missing a whack of my paperwork (i worked full-time, was a student full-time and received an orphan's pension so my taxes are a bit complicated). re-order it over the phone, wait a month, mail it off, wait a month.

i'm out and about a couple days ago when i notice that my bank account has grown by $950. shweet. i still have last years taxes to file too.

the only nice thing about going to school full time is that, in canada, it counts against your taxable income. so my tax rate was at 30%, say, and now it's at 23% because of school (i drop at least a full bracket), giving me 7% of my income back. well... yeah... doesn't work exactly like that but close enough. money back = good thing.

i'm always confused how 9 to 5 workers with no overtime, where their work is their sole source of taxable income, manage to have to pay money in the end. i mean, if you're getting regular raises and it pushes you over a bracket year-wide, fine, that makes sense i suppose... maybe that is the explanation.

anyways, in closing, foo.

I claim zero exemptions so I always get a big refund.

I think, however, if I ever get a good paying job again... I will just save up money and invest it rather than giving the government a free loan.

Incidentally.... taxes??? I got my refund check, like, over 2 months ago.

I owe $20 for federal, but I got a $140 refund on my state. So I guess overall I got a refund.

Yeah...I owed about $20 bucks to NY, but I'm getting about $70 from VT and about $200 from the U.S. So I guess that means refund! but it still makes voting on this poll weird because I did have to, ya know, write a check, and stuff....

Damn multi-state tax crap.

yeah, I got a refund, but it wasn't nearly as big as I had hoped. I usually get a good chunk back after taxes, which I really like... its like finding a $20 in the jean jacket you wore back in 10th grade, you know?

but now that Im married, filing jointly... well, my refund is not very big, and it isn't even all mine! grrr....

I owed last year due to an administrative error at my company (they had me down for an extra withholding exemption) and it was corrected this year but a little too much, so I got a refund.

but now they've implemented a bonus plan, and bonuses are always taxed in the highest bracket, which isn't the bracket I'm in, so that should, in theory, get me a refund from now on (as long as we get bonuses)

Yeah when I had my withholding wrong, what saved me from owing a big chunk was bonuses. Because they were so highly taxed it offset what was happening wrong in the withholding and I'd only end up owing like, $20.

Received and spent. In part on FruCon. :-P

-- Pauley